Double-Edged
by Cairn Rennin
Summary: Esthar and Galbadia are at war. SeeD is trying to stay neutral. (FF8)
1. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
I apologise for the brevity of this prologue. It is also in English, as opposed to American English. Again, I apologise for those of you viewing this document from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Whether I continue with this story depends on the reader response. I normally write strictly real fiction, if that makes any sense. Considerable artistic license was taken in an attempt to make the world of Final Fantasy Eight more immersive and real. I apologise for any mistakes but I no longer own a copy of FF8 for reference. Please report any mistakes, and I will endeavour to correct these.  
All characters and places are copyright of Squaresoft and will remain so until the end of Time. (Approximately four trillion years, for anyone who's interested). Without further ado…

# 

Double-Edged

### Prologue

"War can not be avoided. It can only be postponed, to the advantage of others"  
Niccolò Machiavelli   


Flight Lieutenant Herio Genrey was pressed to his seat all of the way through the 5g manoeuvre that pulled at his entire body. He gripped the flight stick with all of his might, levelling off after turning completely around to face the oncoming planes.  
"This is Red One, clearance to engage targets given by Esthar Control. Happy hunting, gentlemen." The steady buzz of missile lock drew the lieutenant's attention and he pushed the red button on top of the joystick. "Fox One," he shouted over the airwaves as the black smoke of the missile trail shot out from underneath the belly of the plane forwards into the swarm of incoming fighters.  


  
"I'm painted, trying to evade."  
"Missile on your six, Red Two, launching AMRAAM...easy...Yeah, baby, bandit down."  
"Shit, missile inbound, launching chaff and flares...no effect." The sound of a massive explosion filled the airwaves, and the room. "Fuck fuck fuck. Engine One on fire, isolated, engine two inoperative, hydraulics and electrics fried, I'm evac. Shit, the eject mechanisms gone, I'm going down. Ma, I love ya."*  
Squall moved a finger across his throat, the signal to stop the tape. Headmaster Cid stood up and addressed the commander of SeeD. "This was intercepted by Trabia listening post approximately half an hour ago. A formal declaration of war was lodged ten minutes ago. Galbadia and Esthar are at war."  
_Again_, thought the young SeeD sat on the other side of Cid's desk. "What's it got to do with us, sir?" Cid looked thoughtful for a second and then sat back down on his chair, his palms stretched out in front of him.  
"We try to stay neutral in conflicts not involving SeeD forces, but it is hard to when the President of Esthar is our commander's father." Squall grimaced, but said nothing. "And anyway, we still have the matter of our contract with the Forest Owls, who are against Galbadia. The heads of the three Gardens have discussed the matter and we feel that it is best to, for the moment anyway, stay neutral and see how things progress. Galbadia and Trabia Gardens are mobilising and should be out of the respective countries within the hour. I have recommended that they come to Balamb until this country's status is known."  
"What are your orders, sir?" asked the commander. Cid looked up from the document he was studying briefly, and sighed. The rings underneath his eyes told the story. The yawn that was half-stifled merely confirmed it. For a moment he was silent.  
"For now, we should simply monitor the situation. At the moment it's unclear whether Esthar and Galbadia will let this erupt into a full-scale thing. However, I suggest that we move to Alert Status Yellow, just in case." The Alert Statuses were four-fold: Green (normal), Yellow (possible involvement), Red (imminent or current involvement) and Black (full-scale war).† "We should inform the senior staff of the situation, as well." Squall nodded. "Xu is on the bridge with Nida," the older man said. Squall made to get up. "Arrange the meeting as soon as possible. This situation is volatile and unpredictable."  
Commander Leonhart paced out of the door and out of the briefing room. A short distance down the corridor was the platform that would take him to the bridge. He stepped onto it, turned and pressed the 'up' button.  
As the form of the eighteen-year-old slowly rose from the floor, Xu turned, alerted by the hum of the electric motor. "Xu, we have a situation. Report to the headmaster in the briefing room." Xu nodded and swapped places with the young commander, who stepped up to the conn. The familiar sound, which could be likened to a bird chirping, resounded throughout the Garden as it always did before a Garden-wide announcement. "This is Commander Leonhart. We have entered Alert Status Yellow. Follow all normal procedures that will take effect. Quistis Trepe, Irvine Kinneas, Selphie Tilmitt, Zell Dincht and Rinoa Heartilly, report to the briefing room ASAP. Leonhart out."  


  
Zell waited impatiently in the line for hot dogs. Selphie was trying to start up a conversation about something, but Zell really didn't want to know. There were far more important things on his mind now than talking. A single bead of drool slipped out from under his lips as the person in front of him grasped his hot dogs with both hands.  
"This is Commander Leonhart. We have entered Alert Status Yellow." I wonder what he could want now, thought the blond boy, still salivating over the meat products he was about to receive. The message continued but Zell tuned it out. It was only Selphie's incessant prodding that finally made him think about something other than sausages in a bun.  
"Come on, Zell. We've gotta go. Squall told us to go to the briefing room. Let's go!" The little brunette tugged at Zell, anxious to get going. Zell turned, and looked longingly at the hot dogs only feet away from him. "Now!" He whined as he was forcibly dragged from the cafeteria, feet scraping along the floor. Good thing I had meteor junctioned to strength thought the girl with gravity-defying hair.  


  
The first tendrils of light slowly but surely made their way up the bed, closing in on the sleeping form of a young woman. As the first light caressed her cheek, the girl rolled over. Stifling a yawn, she slowly opened her eyes to the world. In the semi-darkness, she barely made out the chair upon which last nights clothes were hastily piled.  
Her head pounding, the girl rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling for a few moments. Her attempts to block out the thumping failed, she half-walked, half-fell to the bathroom and groped around for some aspirin. The three thuds against the door to her dormitory caused her to cradle her head in pain. "What is it?" she meekly called.  
"Come on Rinoa, we've got to go to a briefing. Didn't you hear?" She recognised the drawl of Irvine, and stumbled towards the door. A startled Irvine looked on in surprise and shock at the sight he saw in front of him. Her hair everywhere but behind her head and her nightgown crumpled and pulled out of shape, the only thing worse than these was the expression on her face.  
"Go away I'm sleeping," the dark-haired girl mumbled incoherently. "It's still morning," she continued. Irvine looked at his watch just to make sure.  
"Rinoa, it's half past three in the afternoon and we've gotta get to a briefing." The girl looked unconvinced, or as unconvinced as she could look with the headache of the year stomping its merry way through the folds of her cerebrum.  
"Light's only just got through my window." Irvine just stared at her incredulously.  
"Rinoa, your room faces west."  


  
"And as you can see, the hyperbola stretches off to infinity in all four directions along these two asymptotes. If they are at 90º to each other then it is a rectangular hyperbola." The announcement from the commander sounded over the Tannoy. "All right, I guess we will finish earlier than usual today. I shall see you tomorrow. As the students gathered their things and shuffled out, Quistis Trepe walked down the corridor towards the lift.   
She waited for half a minute, and then the doors opened. A half-asleep Rinoa was being propped up by Irvine, who was trying desperately to make sure that the commander's girlfriend did not slump to the floor. "Oh Irvine, what will Squall say?" the instructor inquired.   
"Not funny, now help me get her to the briefing room." Quistis didn't wait much longer and moved to the other side of the girl. Together they seemed to do a pretty good job of stopping her from falling on her face.   
The three young adults made it to the second floor without any trouble, and stumbled out of the lift in unison. Quistis opened the door to the briefing room and the three of them quickly entered and took seats at the back of the room.   
"You are all here because Galbadia and Esthar are officially at war," said Cid. He watched as each member of the senior staff looked at each other for a few seconds, totally taken aback at this new information. "As you well now, over the past few weeks the new president of Galbadia, one Vilnius Dulche has tried to quell the separatist elements in his government. The recent breakaway 'People's Republics' — read military dictatorships — lead this new president to send forces into these countries. Panavia to the north, and Rakastan to the south, have both recently claimed their independence from Galbadia. With Dollet pushing back Galbadian forces and Timber on the verge of independence, the country was ready for collapse.  
"However, the stunning military victories that Galbadia enjoyed as it overrun first Panavia and then Rakastan buoyed it enough for it to come back at Dollet. Eight days ago, as you may know if you had time to keep up with current affairs, Galbadian forces swept into Dollet and five days ago finished securing the last acre of land.  
"This set of victories must have made Dulche so convinced that he was invulnerable that he has now tried to take on Esthar. The battle happened approximately forty minutes ago. Forces from Galbadia's Fourth and Fifth Air Wings flew west out of their bases on the west coast and engaged elements of Esthar's Foxtrot Wing, who were flying border patrols in Esthar's Eastern region." Cid moved behind the desk to pull down a detailed map of the area.  
"Engagements happened at these three positions near the Estharan coast. Losses by Esthar, who were caught rather on the back foot by all of this, were substantial. We shall see how this turns out, but SeeD would like to stay neutral in this conflict. Galbadia and Trabia gardens will rendezvous at about 1930 hours. Is there anything you would like to add, commander?" Squall looked over at his friends and shook his head. "Very well, are there any questions?"  
"Which side would we go on if we have to?" asked Quistis. Cid looked at the young instructor for a few moments before answering her.  
"We have not yet decided, although due to personal relationships" — the headmaster looked over at Squall who deliberately did not meet his gaze — "and the outstanding Timber contract we would find it hard to side with Galbadia. They asked us for help during the fragmentation of their country but we refused. We tend not to work for dictators." _Unless they pay you enough_, thought Squall.  
"Any more questions? In that case dismissed."

Author: Well, what do you think? If you are not into reading long epics then stop here, because if I do finish this it will most likely be BIG. A lift is an elevator, for those of you who don't know, and the second floor is 3F in the game. I'm fairly sure that ground floors would still exist in FF8, although going 2F 1F GF might confuse a few people. But then, if they can't understand that they deserve to get confused. I know that Panavia is the pan-European consortium created to build the Tornado jet, and copyrights are held. And yes, I am well aware of what a cairn is.

*: "Ma I love ya" were the last words of PSA Flight 182, which crashed at 9:02 am on Monday, 25th Semptember 1978, killing 144 people.  
†: System based broadly on the US DEFCON (Defense Configuration) system, where DEFCON Five is peacetime, and DEFCON One is full-scale nuclear war.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	2. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
To address the myriad points made by people due to Esthar being technologically advanced:

Firstly, if Esthar were far superior to other nations there would be no need for a war. They would have invulnerable aircraft and be unstoppable. Maybe this would be true, but it would not be a terribly good story. I have assumed that the 'enlightened' people of Esthar have spent less time making guns and more time improving their social life.  
Secondly, we have to pay at least a little respect to the laws of physics. Lasers are all well and good, but as the US government has found out with their ill-fated SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative or 'Star Wars') lasers require a great intensity for them to be any good. The incredibly accurate mirrors (lenses absorb too much energy as the laser passes through them) required to focus the beam, as well as the large amount of power required to burn a hole through something like metal may be feasible on the ground or in space, where large solar collectors could focus rays from their sun, but in an aeroplane the entire exercise would be impossible.  
On the same point, defence screens (or 'shields' of energy) such as were on Lunatic Pandora would be rather large power drains as well. Interestingly, the shields on Lunatic Pandora did not stop the Ragnarok, which pushed its way through them, yet it stopped the guns that fired upon it. Whether the shield acts on a principle of inverse kinetic energy absorption (the faster it moves, the more likely it is that it will be stopped), or that the shield gave way to the Ragnarok's (or rather Selphie's) sheer stubbornness is unknown. I have assumed that Lunatic Pandora could have shields because it was a very large…thing…and could afford the power drain.  
The problem of magic is a very large one. I have assumed that only living creatures can use magic, otherwise the entire thing gets a bit pointless. The small problem of requiring a Guardian Force to practise magic did not seem to affect the skills of all of the soldiers met in the game. I think, however, that magic can only be used in CQB (close quarters battles).  
Although I have stayed pretty close to RAF structure, (and in this instalment, the Royal Navy) I reserve the right to abandon it if it is useful to do so. There may come a time when sticking to British armed forces procedures becomes cumbersome.  
Now, back to the story. All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Two

"The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility."  
John A Fisher   


It is a silent killer. There are many silent killers: poison, suppressed weapons, a razor-sharp knife. This one lived under the water, silently drifting through the ocean. However, this was not made of flesh and blood. A hollow cylinder of shaped metal, slicing through the murky depths, silent and deadly.  
"Make your depth two-five-zero feet."  
"Two-five-zero feet, aye." The hulk titled downwards, sinking lower into the ocean. At the rear of the tube a single propeller slowly rotated, pushing the metal, and the one hundred and fifty sailors inside it, deeper and deeper.  
The helmsman eased back of the controller. "Sir, two-five-zero feet." This brought a nod from the captain.  
"Sonar do you read?" The captain occasionally felt a bit weird talking into thin air, but the microphones embedded in the walls picked up everything, and automatically routed the signal through to the sonar room. He still shouted when using the communicator though. The sonar room acknowledged his call. "Sonar, any blips on the scope?" He referred to the sonar (sound navigation and ranging) which had two states: active, where the ship emits a sound and waits for the echo; and passive, where the sonar room wait for any sounds in the ocean.  
"Nothing sir, just some whales fucking off the port bow."  
"That's more information than we needed, crewman." A meek 'sorry' followed, but the captain ignored it. "Helm, ahead six knots. Bearing two-four-zero." The helmsman nodded and replied, rotating the dial that controlled the propeller speed. Six knots was the fastest 'silent running speed', the fastest they could go without alerting enemy sonar to their presence. _Now_, the captain thought, _we wait_.

"I don't know whether I can do this." It was so quiet that Squall only just heard it. A deep breath though, and he was ready to wade in.  
"Come on, it will feel better when you tell me what's on your mind. Trust me, I know." The crumpled form of Rinoa sat on the floor and gently rocked backwards and forwards. She smiled a little, a mere hint. The twin tracks of tears that ran the length of her face glistened as she turned towards him.  
"I feel so alone, Squall. I feel alone among people I know. It makes no sense, I know that as well. I can't explain why, I just feel that way." _I'm way out of my depth here_, thought the boy. _How could I even think to solve her problems when I still have so many of my own. I was so arrogant!_ Squall looked over to his girlfriend, quietly rocking in the half-light. _She thinks that _she_ has problems. I can't stop thinking like this._  
Squall knelt beside his girlfriend and took her hand, placing it in his. "We'll get through this together. You and me. I don't know how long it will take, or where it will take us, but I promise you, we can work this out." She heard those words, realised the effort he was making and tried to bring herself to thank him. She couldn't say anything though, her throat was so dry. She just leant over and hugged him, drifting slowly into sleep.  
"Rinoa?" Squall whispered after a while. No response. _I guess I'm sleeping here then_. Moving a few cushions that lay just within reach, Squall hunkered down and prepared to get a stiff back in the morning. "I love you," he said, so quietly that it wouldn't have reached her even if she had been awake. He gently stroked her hair, softly pushing it from her eyes and smiled. _'And so the transformation is complete'_, he thought, half sarcastically, half triumphantly.

"Sir, we just got pinged big time." The call from sonar was unexpected, and startled the sleepy captain. "Bearing zero-five-niner depth two-two-five feet. Range: one thousand yards. It's right behind us!" The captain straightened up in his seat and called to the helmsman.  
"Helm, head to port, full rudder. Dive, ten degrees down bubble! Flood the ballast tanks. I want a shooting solution on that sub. Arm torpedo tubes one and three." The ground gave way beneath the captain as the vessel titled downwards.  
"Torpedo in the water! Torpedo in the water! Range, eight hundred yards and closing fast!"  
"Keep hard to port, release decoys at three hundred yards! Seal the emergency hatches. Repair teams on standby."  
"Sir, the decoys had no effect. Impact imminent." The captain pushed the button on his seat that controlled the microphones.  
"All hands, brace for impact!" The sub lurched to the left as the torpedo connected with the aft of the boat. A hole the size of a window was what remained after the dull thud of impact.  
"Bridge, engine room is taking on water. Evacuating…" The call was interrupted by another one from sonar.  
"Another torpedo! Torpedo incoming, range eight hundred yards." The captain glanced at the weapons console. The officer there shook his head.  
"We don't have a shooting solution, countermeasures and decoys are off-line."  
"This is the captain. Abandon ship! Man the escape capsules! I repeat, abandon ship!"

The rear admiral sat back on the plush chair, so thoughtfully provided by the Government of Esthar. He was only an hour into the watch and he felt bored already. With constant Combat Air Patrols being run by the fighter planes, the commander of the _Aquaterra_ had virtually nothing to do. Maintenance crews worked automatically, without any input from him. The Landing Signal Officer or LSO controlled all of the incoming planes trying the tricky manoeuvre of landing on an aircraft carrier. The Omicron class had a landing deck of around 120 feet. As normal runways are measured in miles, this required the use of great cables that stretched across the deck of the ship. Planes that came in to land would snag one of the three cables with an arrestor hook, a piece of metal jutting out from the bottom of the aircraft. This would slow them down enough that they could stop in 120 feet.  
"Sir, we just got pinged. Range about five miles, bearing one-oh-one degrees. If it's not a sub, it's in some trouble. The depth was about two hundred feet. We're picking up reflections off another boat sir, roughly the same heading, distance just under five miles, same depth." The admiral nodded, and replied.  
"Very well, keep me informed of developments." The sonarman turned back to his console, watching the sonar readings. They had no reason to go active, and were quite content to sit here and listen. After all, a sixty-thousand-ton vessel is rather easy to see. It is best not to make it very easy to hear, as well.  
"Sir, big noise from the second hull, sir, sounds like an explosion. There's no other noise from that part of the ocean, sir." The captain nodded. "Sir, another one, louder than the first, same hull." _At least something's happened. It'll all go in the signal back to command._  
"Noted, crewman. Ready the signal. FLASH traffic for the Duty Officer." The check-in with command would be in a few minutes, having witnessed something that may be important.

The Duty Staff Officer on that afternoon was Gearn Hyreen, who took the FLASH traffic from the _Aquaterra_ at 1546 hours, checking the co-ordinates given by the carrier with the known patrol routes of their submarines. The line for the A-Class boat _Angellia_ intersected it perfectly. "Get me FOSM." The Flag Officer, Submarines received a copy of the traffic from RES _Aquaterra_, along with the patrol route of the _Angellia_. "The next signal's due to come in at 1630 hours. I think we should initiate SUBLOOK at 1631." The Flag Officer agreed.  
"Not that it'll do much good. We can't really conduct search and rescue in a war zone."

It would not have looked entirely professional for President Loire to bury his face in his hands, but he was sorely tempted to do it anyway. At eight o' clock in the evening he was being given details of the one hundred and forty-six submariners who had most likely perished underneath the ocean. "We initiated SUBLOOK at 1631, then SUBMISS an hour later. Thirty minutes ago, SUBSUNK was officially released. It's very fast, but we have almost no doubt that the two explosions were that of the _Angellia_. Another submarine, the _Agosta_ has swept the ocean floor and revealed a hull that roughly matches the A-Class specifications in the approximate position of the explosions. Zero cavitation noise."  
"What do you want to do about it?" The admiral opened up a brown leather folder, and took out a sheet of paper, handing it to the president.  
"Operation Clean Sweep, sir. We hit each one of their fighter bases, crippling their air force and giving us virtual air supremacy. Constant SEAD and air patrols will win us this war. We have the ability to win without the use of unconventional weaponry."  
"I cannot condone the senseless slaughter of thousands of people, military or otherwise. These are human beings that are dying out there, admiral. I feel guilty for every life that ends in that water or in the air. If the Galbadians would talk peace, then I would listen. Do we know what they are trying to accomplish with these attacks?"  
"The Galbadians want, or rather President Dulche wants, to rule the entire world. Total world domination is his only goal. He will kill as many people as is necessary for his goal to become reality. We can not sit idly by while he overruns our troops, bombs our fortifications and sinks our vessels! We need to strike NOW, and strike hard. Operation Clean Sweep will do just that. We can disembowel the Galbadian attacks by destroying their ships and their aeroplanes. This can be done, and with the minimal loss of life."  
_Minimal loss of life_, Laguna thought. _Since when has there been an acceptable number of deaths?_ He had killed people, he remembered. Hyne, that felt like such a long time ago. Twenty years ago, a man matching Laguna's description killed Estharan soldiers by filling their bodies with bullets, perforating their skin like little pinpricks. But it was not Laguna. That was Loire, the soldier, not Laguna the widower, Laguna the President of Esthar, a man held in high regard for his commitment to peace.  
Some would say that he had become soft in his old age, but he preferred to think that he had become more mature. True, he occasionally missed the old days, when he drank beer with Kiros and Ward in the bar at the hotel, watching Julia play. To think that his son would fall in love with a woman he loves. _Loved_, he mentally corrected himself.  
But when he thought of the past, it was not of his army days that he thought, but back to his year with the love of his life. _If she had still been alive, would I have become president?_ The thought had crossed his mind before. He would willingly give up all of this to be with her once again, of that he was sure. "It's too late for that," he said.  
"What's the matter now, Laguna?" He had buried his face in his hands, and when Kiros had walked through the door he had seen the President of Esthar sitting there. "Let me guess, thinking about Raine?" He sighed, seeing another conversation in front of him that he wasn't going to relish. "You have anything to say?"  
"How could I leave her, Kiros? How could I just walk out that day and leave her? She needed me. When Ellone needed me I wasn't there. When Raine needed me I wasn't there. When Squall needed me I wasn't there! I failed Ellone, I failed Raine, and I failed Squall. He hates me and he has every reason to. I feel guilty for leaving, and I should do. It's all my fault. I should have been there for them, helped them somehow. Instead…I spent my time being irresponsible. My own son, my own flesh and blood hates me, Kiros. It hurts me to even look at him, to know that all of my life that I have been here he has been in a pain of his own, and it was because of me."  
"You need to talk to him, to sort out your differences, because in this state you are of no help, either to the millions of people who look at you and see a president, or to those you think you failed. When the people of Esthar see you, they do not see a failure. They see their saviour, a person who risked his life to stop a tyrant that had plagued their lives. You saved them, you saved them all."  
"If I could save a billion people, why couldn't I save just one?" He held up his finger to emphasise the point. "I made a difference to all those people" – a sweep of his other arm took in the city of Esthar – "why couldn't I make a difference to the one person who loved me?" The tears welled in his eyelids, threatening to pour down his cheeks at any moment. "While I was helping them, I let the most precious thing in my life slip away, and I should feel guilty. Because I am."  
"What would you do, then? Stay with Raine? In case you have forgotten, you left to rescue Ellone. What would have happened if you hadn't have gone? Raine still would have died, but you would have lost Ellone as well. Maybe you should talk to Squall. If you can resolve your issues with him, there's a chance you could feel a bit better. You missed his childhood. There is nothing you can do about that. But you don't have to miss his adulthood as well."  
The president leant back in his chair, wiping away the tears. "I can always try. There's no harm in trying, after all." Kiros nodded in agreement. "OK, I'll call him in the morning. Well, his morning. About four o' clock in the afternoon here." He smiled a little. "Time zones are confusing." Kiros got up and made for the door. Just as he was about to leave, Laguna stopped him. "Kiros," he called. The man stopped. "Thank you."  
Kiros walked out of the door to find Ward just outside. "Hey Ward! What's happening?" The sound of frantic typing could be heard, then a computerised voice spoke back.  
"Nothing much," it said, "is Laguna still down about Raine?" Kiros nodded. _That voice sounds a lot like Ward had used to._ More typing, then, "maybe we can cheer him up. Disguise him a bit then go to a bar or something. Maybe go to the cinema." Kiros laughed a bit, but shook his head.  
"You could try, but I think it's going to take much more than that to bring him back to his former self. You know, this new-found introspection really started when he first found out about Squall, but the depression didn't set in straight away. I think that if he can patch things up with Squall, it might help a bit. It's no substitute for the years that he missed, but perhaps it is enough." Ward typed some more for a few seconds. The computer started again.  
"You know, I hope so. I want the old Laguna back." Kiros sighed a little, nodding his head.  
"Don't we all, Ward, don't we all."

Zell ran forward, launching a flurry of blows at the creature. It was only an overgrown plant, and it didn't take much to kill. Selphie had smacked the other Grat straight in the appendage with her Strange Vision. The two young SeeDs dusted themselves down and carried on walking through the training centre. "How are things going with that girl? What is her name again?"  
"Inthea, and I don't want to talk about it." Selphie smiled.  
"Inthea, that's a pretty name. Come on, you can tell me. Or do you wanna act like Squall."  
"Whatever." He smiled as he said it, and Selphie laughed with him. "Oh, all right. But there's nothing to say. We went out a couple of days ago, the end." Selphie giggled.  
"And you haven't see her since? Do you want to lose her before you've even got her?" Zell looked at her, but said nothing. "I know that I couldn't stand it when Irvine would constantly pester me, so I told him to quit it one day. He did, and three days later I asked him out. I don't know why…" She sighed, a faraway look in her eye.  
_Is she deliberately trying not to help me?_ Zell turned as another Grat decided to show itself. _Not now, go away_. A quick punch combination, finished off by a menacing left hook took out the creature. Just to make sure, Zell junctioned Encounter None. "So what do you want to do?" Zell waited for a response. "Selphie?" He squatted down beside her. "Earth to Selphie. Earth to Selphie. Can you hear me?" She nodded, giggling and he continued. "We could go and see a movie."  
"Yay, one with Sir Laguna in. He's so cool."  
"Selphie, he only made two movies, and you've seen them both a thousand million times before."  
"Then one more won't matter then, will it?" Zell shook with frustration. _Whatever did Irvine see in this girl?_ He was about to answer her when he saw that she wasn't sitting where she was a second ago. He turned, and saw her skipping off into the distance. _Aw, man._ Zell jogged after the girl, who was in a state of sheer bliss.  
"Shall I go and get Irvine?" _For some company when you go weak at the knees over Laguna,_ he didn't add. She didn't reply, too happy to notice anything. "Wait for us then, Selphie." She didn't seem to notice. Then Zell had an idea. "I'm just going to get Irvine then, yes, here I am, going to get Irvine." He turned in the direction of the dormitories, then as soon as she was out of sight, he ran as fast as he could.

The form of a man walked into a bar in Balamb. As he stepped into the building, he looked around at the patrons. The half-dozen people that were drinking were doing so quietly. His experienced eyes swept each man for any telltale signs that they were carrying weapons. As far as he could tell, each one of them was clean, from his side anyway. As he walked towards the bar, he glanced around the room.  
The exits were in front of him and behind him, with windows along the far wall. Behind the bar were an assortment of drinks and a door, wood façade, with a golden handle. The bar was polished oak, with a gold-coloured rail running along the length of the surface. There were roughly a dozen tables with three or four chairs each circling them. The chairs were really stools, of the four-legged variety. Wooden legs with a cushioned seat, the fabrics used to hold in the foam either a blue or green.  
The walls were wood panelling, with various photographs in frames hung around the room at regular intervals. Some of the photographs had people in from the bar. He recognised the bartender in a few of them. He turned to look at the bartender. He wore a half-buttoned white shirt and black jeans, he couldn't see the man's shoes. He was busy rubbing a pint glass with the towel that usually was slung over his shoulder, a classic barman pose. His features were not pleasant to say the least. A crooked nose held the gaze, but the jaw-line seemed to have more dips in than it should. His build was quite heavyset and the muscles of his chest bulged underneath his shirt.  
He glanced once more around the photographs and stopped at a picture of the bartender. He looked about ten years younger in the black-and-white photo, and his right arm was being held upwards by another man. His eyes followed the arms up, and he noted the boxing gloves covering his hands. He turned around to look at the bartender. "What'll it be?"  
"Triple whiskey." The barman raised his eyebrows, and turned to place the glass underneath the Optic.* He turned back, and slid the glass towards the man. The man paid the bartender, nodding his thanks.  
"Triple whiskey is a bit of a big order. Normally means someone's got a lot on his mind. If you want to talk, I'm here." The man gave a sarcastic laugh.  
"If you had seen the things that I have seen, it would be you who would be picking up this glass." He left it at that. The bartender shrugged, and walked off down the bar to serve another man. _Throughout my life, prolific as it was short, I have tried to be the best at whatever I do._ There's something happening. He could feel it, something was going to happen that would change his life forever. He was still breathing, a sure sign that he was doing something right, although that something must have been the only thing. _I have never been one to look back on my life, to savour memories. I am far too rational for that_. He finished his drink, and waved at the bartender. "Another."  
"Very well." He refilled his glass. Taking the note with a nod, he left the man with his thoughts. He had left things as irrational as feelings behind a long time ago. _Left them behind with my conscience_. A conscience was a dangerous thing to have. It betrayed you, left you with nothing but a hollow feeling that you had done the right thing. _Yes_, he thought, _I left that behind years ago._ He drained his glass. "Another."  
"Are you sure?" The man glared at him. "OK, but this is on your head." He set it down in front of him. The man nodded his appreciation, and the bartender walked away. _This is what I am resigned to_, he thought, _the great man, relegated to this._ He gulped back the brown liquid, the whiskey starting to burn his throat. _ I suppose I had better find somewhere to sleep, and wait for them to arrive._  
The man got up, turned and walked out of the door. "Who was that?" one of the regular patrons asked the bartender.  
"I don't know, but he's fucked up, I'll tell you that." 

Author: Whether you could guess this or not, the SUBLOOK, SUBMISS and SUBSUNK are real codes given by the Royal Navy. Someone wrote in their review of the previous chapter, 'You almost made me feel sorry for Laguna.' Well, I think that Laguna was put in a rather terrible position. He blames himself for his son's…problems ;-) and for Raine's death even though he couldn't have prevented it. Maybe this part will finally get you to feel just a little bit sorry for him.  
I apologise for the Selphie and Zell bit, both for the poor characterisations and for putting Zell and Selphie in this fiction. Maybe I should leave them out, and just include sane people ;-) I think that I'm starting to use the pair as the light relief. As for Quistis, I don't know quite what to do with her yet (Irvine wouldn't have that trouble ;-P ) Just as a note, I do not condone the downing of triple whiskeys, well not all of the time.  
With the ever-growing spectre of work and deadlines there will be an unknown gap in between this chapter and the next one. You have been warned. Something will happen in the next few chapters though that may make the wait worth it (or then again maybe not).

*: For those of you who do not know, they are the bulbous valves underneath bottles that pour out spirits.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	3. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Three

"In the long run, we will all be dead."  
John Maynard Keynes   


Squall opened his eyes, slowly letting the rays of light caress his eyes, drawing his irises toward the black spots of his pupils. He felt cold, hard stone under his hands. He craned his neck around to take in his surroundings. From what he could see, he was in a corridor. In front of him it turned to the right, and he could not see past there. The walls were blood red, the ceiling as black as pitch. The stone he felt underneath him was off-white, the rough surface scratching his hands as he moved them over the mottled surface.  
_Where am I?_ he thought. "Hello?" he shouted, but it came out as barely a whisper. "Is anybody there?" He tried to get up, but his legs refused to comply. He sat up, palms of his hands flat against the rock behind him. He tried to move his foot, and after ten seconds of struggle it started to twist.  
Gathering up his strength, he tried once more. This time his entire leg moved, shifting half an inch to the right. He tried to concentrate, but every time he made a thought, it would dissolve in his mind. He groaned, the pain searing through his head finally becoming unbearable. Closing his eyes, he tried to push away the pain, to concentrate on a single thought, but it slipped away even as it came.  
Standing up, he almost fell forwards but threw his leg out in front of him before he crashed into the floor. He stumbled forward, a few steps at first, but gathering in pace as he went. Something was bothering him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. He turned the corner, and along the corridor stood a figure. It was dressed in a black robe, and held a long stick, attached to which was a sharp curving blade. It was a weapon that Squall did not recognise. "There is no escape." A voice that sounded through his head, seeming to bypass his ears altogether. "I will find you."  
Squall turned, and tried to run in the other direction. The stumbling boy turned the corner, only to see another figure, its back to him again. "Where are you going?" it asked mockingly. "Wherever you go, there you are. And so am I."  
"Why are you following me?" The question just managed to form on his lips, but it carried all of the way down the corridor. That thought was in his brain again, something that was so obvious that it should occur to him straight away, but he couldn't find it.  
The form laughed, but it sounded wholly unnerving. "Why am _I_ following _you_? You chase me, Loire. You slowly catch me until you throw yourself at me."  
"What do you want with me?"  
"You are a strange one, Loire. No 'Where am I' or 'Who are you'. I like you, Loire. Do you not want to know why you are here?" Squall nodded, although it hurt to do so. "I cannot explain why you are here. Only you can explain that. You have all of the answers Loire, they are all inside of you. In time, you may find answers to your questions. In time, all is possible." The figure started to fade, getting greyer all of the time, until he was gone. "In time, you may know. Until then…"

"Will Squall Leonhart, Quistis Trepe, Zell Dincht, Irvine Kinneas and Selphie Tilmitt please report to the Headmaster's office." Squall blinked a few times, removing the last vestiges of sleep from his system. He glanced down at his watch and Rinoa. _Why do I have to wake her? She looks so peaceful,_ he thought. He gently nudged the girl awake, careful not to push her too far.  
"Wake up, sleepyhead." Rinoa moaned a little, then rolled over, landing with a thump onto the floor. "You want to get up now?"  
"Wha…what…why…why do I have to get up? Can't I just lie here? I felt more comfortable on you though."  
"There's a meeting in Cid's office. I've got to go." Rinoa struggled to her feet, and tried to clear her head.  
"OK, give me a few minutes and I'll come with you." Squall looked away. _She feels alienated as it is, how am I going to tell her this?_  
"It's all right, Rinoa, the headmaster only wants to see me." Rinoa looked slightly disappointed, but Squall thought that if she knew the truth maybe she would be a little more upset.  
"Oh, OK. I'll take a bath, and meet you when you come out. There's some stuff I need to get from Balamb, and you can come with me. We can take a walk by the beach if you want." Squall smiled, although only for a second. _I guess smiling becomes easier with practice._ "Come back Squall, you're talking to me. I wonder sometimes whether there's somebody in your head that you talk to." _Maybe there is, a brutally honest person who lives inside my brain. He doesn't lie, he doesn't get mad or upset. He is always there, always giving an insight into life._ He stopped thinking to see Rinoa frantically waving her hands in front of his face. "Helllllooo? Anybody there?"  
"Whatever."  
"Welcome back, Squall." He said nothing, instead turning to leave. "I'm sorry, OK. Hyne, you take things so seriously." Squall sighed impatiently.  
"I've got to go to a meeting," he reminded her. "I'll come and get you when I'm done." He shut the door, leaving her alone. _Why am I here?_ she wondered, not for the first time. _I love Squall, I want to be with him, but I don't feel right here, with SeeD._ Rinoa walked into the bathroom. _I'll go and talk to Selphie, she'll cheer me up. I feel at home with her._

"Ah, Commander Leonhart, I'm glad you are here. Now that everyone is here, I shall start the meeting. Our first and only matter for discussion is the escalation of the conflict between Esthar and Galbadia. Yesterday, the _Angleterra_-Class submarine _Angellia_ was sunk by a Galbadian submarine, causing the loss of one hundred and forty-six lives. Esthar have started to strike back, although reports suggest that their newest operation, Clean Sweep, has had only limited success. The Estharan military was hard-pushed dealing with the monsters after the Lunar Cry, but with the Galbadian assault as well, Esthar may be in trouble.  
"The reason that I brought you here today is that sources within the Esthar military have suggested that the Chief of the Defence Staff, one Glance Heartsoul will make a recommendation to their president that they employ SeeD for covert operations inside Galbadia. Should this be the case, then our neutral stance will definitely be removed. Siding with Esthar is a bit of a double-edged sword: if Esthar lose, then our reputation will suffer, and we will probably be the next target for Dulche. If Esthar win, our role will probably never emerge, and if it did, the Esthar government would play down its size. Of course, if we refuse, we'll probably still become targets for Dulche, and alienate Esthar. On top of that, we would have refused a contract, not something normally done by a mercenary organisation such as ours.  
"So, if Esthar decides to ask us for help, then we shall agree. The team, depending on the nature of the mission, would be made up of some or all of the five of you. It will be up to the commander to decide on the team." He was interrupted by a knock on the door. "Come in." The communications officer came in, carrying a piece of paper. The girl handed the paper to the headmaster, and quickly exited the room. Cid quickly scanned the page. "It seems that our sources were correct. The President of Esthar has asked us for help." He flipped over the page, quickly reading through the attached information.  
"It seems that they want us to take out a communications relay station on the western coast." He handed around the aerial and satellite photographs that came with the communiqué. "It seems that this communications station plays a very important part in the handling of military and civilian communication. It seems to direct Galbadia's few communication satellites as well. This is a high-value target, and Esthar Joint Command would like to see its neutralisation immediately.  
"All of the information that you will need is provided here." He handed the document to Squall, who leant over and took it. "This mission is very urgent. The quicker the communications relay post is put out of action, the better off the Esthar military will feel. You should depart immediately. The Ragnarok is fuelled and clearance is being acquired from Balamb Air Traffic Control as we speak. Dismissed."  
Squall nodded at the headmaster and turned to his friends. "I believe that due to the nature of this mission, we shall all go, then once a definite plan has been decided upon, we will see if everyone is needed." The rest of the group nodded their assent and the five SeeD members briskly walked out of the door, and down the short corridor into the lift.

"Romeo-Golf-Kilo, you have clearance to take off from Garden Strip One. Climb to an altitude of one-two-thousand feet and heading one-niner-two until out of Balamb airspace. Weather is mild, cloud at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet, a north-westerly breeze of two to three knots. No traffic in vicinity of route. Your channel is one-niner-six. Have a nice trip, Ragnarok."  
Selphie pressed the communicator switch. "Control this is Romeo-Golf-Kilo, message acknowledged, thank you very much. Ragnarok out." Selphie pressed the switch again, closing the channel. She rotated the dial until it read 1.96GHz, then thumbed the 'lock' button. Flicking a row of switches on a panel in front of her, she switched on first the aft-mounted engines, then the ventral ones. When they had both started up, she slowly eased the left throttle forwards until the ship left the ground.  
Satisfied with the performance of the ventral engines she pushed forwards the throttle to full military thrust, and the ship began to climb at six thousand feet per minute. When the ship hit eleven thousand feet she eased back with the throttle, gliding to a stop at twelve thousand feet. Shifting the left throttle into the 'hover' position, Selphie pushed forward with the right throttle, and the ship slowly began to gain momentum, slicing through the air.  
As the craft passed six hundred knots Selphie noticed that they were nearing the Balamb coast. "This is Romeo-Golf-Kilo, now leaving Balamb airspace." The acknowledgement came from the control centre and Selphie eased up the altitude throttle, taking the craft higher.  
"Where are we going, Selphie?" asked Squall.  
"Tee hee, you'll see." Selphie increased power to the forward engine and the ship tilted backwards. The giant panoramic windows in the cockpit were filled with clouds that were fast approaching the nose of the ship. The clouds began to envelop the red ship, the droplets of water clinging to the wings. As visibility from the cockpit dropped to zero, Selphie drew in her breath.  
Then the ship exploded past the top of the clouds, a great trail of steam streaking back from the rear of the ship. The cockpit was bathed in the bright yellow light from the unobscured sun, the sky a brilliant shade of blue. "Weather's all right up here isn't it?" Even Quistis smiled as the sunlight coated her face in pure light.  
"That's because we're above the weather, Selphie. If anyone needs me I'll be planning our mission." Selphie scowled. "MEANIE!" Squall shrugged and turned to get on the platform. "You don't have to enjoy it, then." Another shrug and Squall pressed the button to lower the platform.  
_What is their problem? We are on a dangerous mission and all they can do is marvel at the sun. Am I the only one who is taking this seriously?_ Squall reached the lower deck and started off towards the crew quarters. All along the way there he was thinking about the upcoming mission. Sentry duty rosters, angles of attack and arcs of fire we flying through his brain as he re-examined the photographs and blueprints. The mission was simple: take out the tower by any means.  
He was starting to draw up a possible attack plan when a thought occurred to him. _The dream I had._ It had felt so strange, much more vivid than his other dreams, which he seldom remembered or even remembered having. He could still see the black figure holding that weapon. It was something that he had never seen before, it was certainly not part of the SeeD arsenal.  
He picked up a piece of paper and a pen, and drew out the weapon. First he drew the handle. A long thick piece of wood, slightly curved, and with a short piece of wood nailed onto it as a handle. He then started the blade. Two sweeping lines met each other at a point, and he could see in his mind's eye the blade, dull metal. There was something wrong with the way the blade looked, but he couldn't quite put his finger.  
His hands were drawn instinctively to his own weapon, Lion Heart. Gripping the handle, he watched as the glinting from the lights above played across its surface. Thrusting it towards an imaginary foe, he waited a second before swinging it across, satisfied by the whoosh it made as it sliced through the recycled air. _How does this ship recycle air?_ he wondered. _I'll have to ask Zell, he might know._  
He looked at his drawing and felt a wave of fear pulsate through him. _Why am I feeling like this?_ It was something he could not explain, but he put it into the back of his mind. _There are lots of things I do not understand, like how this ship recycles air_ he thought sarcastically. _Maybe it was just one of those things that can't be explained, like déjà vu._ But déjà vu _has_ been explained, he thought. It is a slight difference in two normally simultaneous coaxial nerve centres, or something like that. But the point is it has been explained.  
There is a difference, he thought, between explainable and known. Everything is explainable, if only we knew the explanation. But he put the dream into the back of his mind nonetheless, and carried on with his mission planning.  
He started to draw on one of the copies of the map he had made. "If we feint to the left, sweeping up here" – he drew a long line curving upwards – "Then make the real strike into the establishment." Another line went right and into the compound. "Plant the device and then out" – he drew another line back to the feint line – "And back out the way we came in." He stared at his plan. It was the weapon from his dream. "I need a break."  
_I am not in a fit state of mind to lead this mission. People rely on me too much as it is. I don't want them to get in trouble because I have problems._ Squall lifted himself up, and walked slowly towards the moving platform. Stepping on the cold metal, he thumbed the button and the panel rose up off the floor. "Come to apologise?" said Irvine. Squall glared at him but said nothing. He walked over to Quistis.  
"Instructor Trepe, may I have a word with you?" The woman nodded, a little puzzled, and they moved to the rear of the cockpit. "I am not in a fit state of mind to lead this mission. If you will accept it, I will hand command of this mission over to you." His fixed his gaze on her blue eyes, gauging her reaction. She nodded, and accepted command.  
"Is there anything that we can do, that I can do?" Squall shook his head and grimaced.  
"No, just fulfil the mission. Thank you." The boy turned and got on the platform, his body disappearing beneath the floor of the cockpit. Quistis pressed the button to bring the lift back up.  
"What was all that about?" Zell asked.  
"I don't know, but Squall just gave me the command of this mission, so I guess I had better go and prepare the mission plan then."

Rinoa played softly on the piano that was in her room (If you want to know what she was playing click [here][1]). She had requested it from the Garden stores almost as soon as she was resident in Garden, and it helped her to forget her problems, to leave life behind, and just focus on the ivory keys of the piano. As she held the first chord, the tension fell out of the muscles in her shoulders, and the rhythm soon built up. Her hands glided up the piano, striking the keys with practised ease. She knew this off by heart, and played it nearly every morning to set her up, but it did not seem to sound as good as it usually did. As she held the final chord, the feeling of contentment left her body, and she was once again part of this world.  
_Maybe I'll go and see Selphie now, before Squall gets out of his meeting._ She turned on the stool and stood up, tucking the small stool back under the piano. She made her way to the door, looking back one last time to make sure she had not forgotten anything, and stepped out into the corridor. A few moments later she arrived at Selphie's door.  
A gentle knock, because she didn't know if Selphie was up yet. Then louder knocks to get the girl up. _Funny_, she thought, _Selphie's usually here._ She then tried Quistis' door, but to no avail. _This is starting to get weird. At least I know where Squall is._ She turned and went back to her room, shutting the door behind her.  
Today was like any other day. There was nothing to do at Garden except learn and train. She had not really made a lot of friends at Garden. Some people, especially the younger students, considered her as a threat. They had always been taught that they were being trained to fight sorceresses regardless of their guise. Rinoa knew that she was not really much of a sorceress. She didn't want to be, either. It was just another thing, like her parentage. Something to separate her from other members of her species, to distance herself from the people who she saw every day. Squall and her other friends did not seem to mind, although they were certainly in the minority. _It is far easier to fear what you do not know, rather than try to understand it_. She had heard that somewhere before, and now more than ever she knew the axiom to be true.  
She looked out across the Balamb scenery. She could see a few people playing in a field far away. _Insignificant, they look so small, like ants in a colony._ Every worker ant was the same, another amongst the faceless masses. None were shunned, singled out. How she envied the people playing in that field. They would go through their lives, probably being nothing special, living and dying in obscurity. They would never experience what it was to be famous. _Or maybe infamous_, she thought, remembering the looks that her fellow human beings had given her when they first found out that she was a sorceress.  
Why was she here, anyway? She was here because she was the commander's girlfriend. They had let their enemy into their camp because their commander loved her. And she loved him. But could love conquer all? Could it conquer desolation, the feeling that you were all alone, in spite of the love given to her by one man? He was a truly remarkable man, she thought, as she had on many occasions. _He let me in when it clearly pained him to do so. But I cannot share this feeling of loneliness with him. I tried, but I only managed one sentence before I couldn't go on._  
The sound of soft crying filled the air in her room, as the tears very slowly rolled down her cheeks. "I cannot go on. I need Squall to be here, to be with me." She got up and ran for the door.

"What do you mean 'he's not here'?" He had a meeting today with the headmaster." Xu nodded.  
"Yeah, they did. They all left in the Ragnarok straight after. We're not allowed to discuss where they've gone though. It's classified, see."  
Rinoa was silent for a moment, then a thought hit her. "They? You said that they had a meeting."  
"That's right. Squall, Quistis, Selphie, Zell and Irvine. They all left in the…" But she trailed off as Rinoa turned and ran down the corridor. 

Author: This has probably raised more questions than it answered. I don't know whether to wrap this up in thirteen chapters or go for the full eighteen. The piece played by Rinoa is Chopin's Nocturne No. 17 in B (the first 50 seconds of it.) Chapter Four will be up sometime, but I don't yet know what will be in it. I have several things to write in the next few chapters, but I don't yet know the order in which they will be written.

[Cairn Rennin][2]

   [1]: http://www.davcrav.cwc.net/ff8stuff/rinoa1.mid
   [2]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	4. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Four

"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight  
The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade."  
Percy Bysshe Shelley  


Freedom: it is a word used too often. It is often used by children to their parents, complaining over the restrictions that they have to suffer, fighting the injustices that they see in every face and in every turn. When so many of us are denied the basic freedom in life – that of being able to live – we must take our freedoms, however small, like a beggar, grasping the penny flung at him by a scoffing man, both disgusted at the level to which mankind has sunk.  
The freedom that Rinoa Heartilly was now enjoying was a recently-gained freedom, compared with the whole of history. It was exhilarating and fun. Many men had tried to fly, to pursue man's dream of freeing itself from the earth, of applying a solvent that will free them from the glue of gravity. He has built weird and wonderful contraptions to this end, but the temporary freedom gained, the true exhilaration of being free from that which has enslaved you, bonded you to the earth like a prisoner in a jail, is quickly lost. As the contraption in which you experienced the dizzying rush of ecstasy that accompanies man's momentary triumph over gravity falls to earth, a single thought runs through your head: gravity _always_ wins.  
Bounded in a metal shell, encased in the technology that can finally realise man's dream of conquering his prison, Rinoa flew. She really sat, whilst the metal hulk flew, but in the mind's eye reality is warped, and satisfaction can be attained, despite its victory being a hollow one. With one hand on the cyclic and the other on the collective, she piloted the helicopter.  
They have none of the speed or glamour of the latest fighter jets, which streak across the air at Mach 3. They are much more sedentary, drifting along, albeit at a respectable 100 miles per hour. Some people saw the helicopter as an outdated form of transport, unable to pack the punch of the fast jets that could reach trouble five times as fast as the humble helicopter. But the helicopter has survived because of its ability to survive. It could hover and duck behind hills and trees. It was a very potent weapon on the battlefield.  
Normally this helicopter, like most others, would have two crew, but there was little point for a weapons officer on board a weaponless craft. It was a _very_ stupid country that left its weapons on the aircraft. Rinoa was flying solo, and it was helpful because she did not want to tell anyone that she was gone. Xu might suspect something and sooner or later they were going to notice that there was one less helicopter than there should have been. Luckily for Rinoa there was no-one there as security and it was very easy to take the craft.  
_I have to stay below radar coverage_*. She had skipped the pre-flight checks and gone straight into flicking on the engines. As the three-bladed rotor hummed into life, she had lifted up sharply on the collective, pulling up on the lever. The collective is a short lever, much like a handbrake in cars, that is pulled up to alter the angle of the rotor blades – in essence it lifts the helicopter.  
She had only taken two flying lessons and was starting to regret the decision to take this craft into the sky. Noticing a hill in front of her, she pushed her left foot down on the yaw pedals to turn right, much like handlebars on a bicycle. Unfortunately, yaw pedals don't quite work that way, as she suddenly remembered to her dismay as the craft spun to her left, heading straight for a rather closer hill. "Warning! Collision warning!" the computer chimed in a soft feminine voice. It seemed to Rinoa that the computer was not quite taking this seriously. Smashing her foot down on the right pedal, and yanking up the collective, she pulled right on the cyclic, banking the helicopter away from the hill, and climbing to two hundred feet.  
"Unidentified aircraft heading one-niner-three degrees, you are violating Balamb airspace. Identify yourself and prepare to be escorted." _Shit_ thought Rinoa, thinking a rarely used word in her vocabulary. She didn't respond and instead lowered her collective to dip to about one hundred feet, still moving at 110 mph. She dropped below the hilltop and the radar ground station lost contact. She doubted if they were not going to send an aeroplane to intercept her though. _Guess I've got to get out before then._ She pushed the cyclic forward as far as it would go and adjusted the collective so she wouldn't fly into the ground. The helicopter's nose dropped and the hulk of metal surged forward, slicing through the air at 120 mph. She could see the coastline ahead of her. She didn't slow down as she dropped the craft to fifty feet, and would soon be skimming the tops of the swells.  
The majestic craft shot down the beach, catapulting out into the vast ocean. In the bulbous glass cockpit of the craft, Rinoa marvelled at the sea in front of her. The clear blue stretched as far as she could see, disappearing into the horizon many miles away. She was free at last, free of SeeD, free of her father, free of gravity, free of all of the cares in the world. She could stay up here forever, lost in the majesty of the world around here. She eased the craft upwards. There was no need to avoid radar coverage now, she was in international waters and beyond Balamb's radar stations' range. She raised the collective and pulled back on the cyclic. She was going to savour every moment.  
The craft started to climb, first passing five hundred feet, then a thousand feet. She levelled it off at two thousand feet, admiring the view. She looked up at the sky, seeing light blue and the yellow disc of the sun. Two clouds, white and puffy, slowly glided along the midday sky. As the helicopter cruised along at just over sixty mph, she sat back and remembered.

"Squall, I want to learn how to fly." Squall looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face.  
"You want to fly. Why?" Rinoa shrugged.  
"I don't know why, but when I'm in the Ragnarok, I feel that the…I don't know how to explain it. It's just a terrific rush that I get when I'm in the air, and I think that I would enjoy flying a plane." Squall hesitated for a moment. "You have flown before. It's all a part of SeeD training. You only took the basic modules but Selphie did the full course. She told me once that flying was the most important thing in her life. Being in command of your own destiny, able to decide where you want to go, it was a terrific feeling. All I want is the chance to try it. You cannot be so selfish as to deny me that which all of you have done." She thought that maybe she had overdone it with the last line, but Squall seemed to agree.  
"OK, you can do a taster course, to see how you like it." Rinoa hugged him with all of her might. "If you don't like it then you can stop. And the instructor can always stop it in the interests of health and safety." Rinoa glared at him. "Hey, I've seen your driving." She blushed, and turned away.  
The two of them went down into the training area outside Garden. Ever since the conflict with Galbadia Garden, SeeD have kept a small number of aeroplanes and helicopters on station in a purpose-built hangar. Squall found the man that he was looking for underneath an attack helicopter. "Jefran." The man pulled himself out from under the craft.  
"Hey Squall." He was a little over six feet in height, and looked superbly fit. Blond locks fell about his face, coming to just above his eyebrows. His eyes were a brilliant blue, and sparkled as his face turned. He was dressed in overalls, covered in oil, but he was perfectly clean. He offered his hand, and Squall shook it. Rinoa looked puzzled. Squall had never shaken anyone's hand that she had seen before. "This must be Rinoa." She nodded. "Pleased to meet you. So, what can I do for you?"  
"Well Jef, Rinoa here wants to learn to fly, so I agreed that she could have a taster session. What have we got today?" Jefran started but was interrupted by Rinoa, who was looking at the helicopter.  
"Why is there a spinny thing on the back of it?" she inquired. Jefran smiled.  
"First, is called a rotor, but second, I'm going to answer your question with a demonstration. He wandered off, and left the two of them looking at each other. He returned a minute later carrying a plank of wood and pushing an office chair. "Squall, would you care to help with the demonstration?" Squall looked like a deer trapped in headlights. He looked at Jefran, then at Rinoa and back to Jefran. He finally surrendered, nodding his tacit compliance.  
Jefran smiled and pushed the chair over to Squall. "First sit down on this." Squall obediently sat on the chair. "Now, hold up your arms and grab this." He handed Squall the plank, which Squall struggled to hold above his head. "Now, lift your feet off the floor and rotate the plank in your hands." Squall did this, straining his muscles to hold up the heavy plank. He turned the plank round, and he started to rotate in the opposite direction.  
"Thank you Squall." He took the plank off him and Squall flexed his arms. "Can we have a round of applause for our assistant Squall." Rinoa clapped and so did three or four maintenance workers who had heard Jefran talking. Squall glared at the instructor. "This is scientifically known as 'conservation of angular momentum', or more colloquially as 'a problem'. The solution is the tail rotor, which forces the craft in the opposite direction, cancelling out the turning effect." Rinoa smiled, understanding.  
"I like you Jefran. Can you teach me to fly?"  
"I don't fly aeroplanes. I'm a helicopter instructor. I taught Commander Squall here to fly a Huey back when he was thirteen, back when we leased our aircraft from Balamb Air Force. Picked it up real well, too. He didn't go past basic training, though. He could have made a top pilot easy, but I guess it's not in everyone's blood. If you want to fly a chopper, then I'm your man, but if you want to go with the fighter pukes, then that's your prerogative, girl."  
"No, I think I want to fly a helicopter. They look cool." Jefran smiled.  
"And one more is converted to the faith. The infidel fighter jocks will lose the battle for supremacy, and we will rise again as the kings of the air!" He laughed, and the maintenance crew chuckled. They heard this little speech every time someone took up helicopter classes.

Rinoa grimaced. _I'm in way over my head here._ She had had only two lessons, only three hours in a seat, and half of that was Jefran explaining what to do, or more often what _not_ to do. _Like go solo after only two lessons_. She chided herself for being so stupid. She was in the middle of nowhere. Well, not quite, she was in the middle of _somewhere_ but it was anyone's guess where that somewhere was. But she knew that simply flying in this direction, she will eventually hit the Galbadia-Esthar bridge. _Let's hope not literally_, she thought.  
In the distance she could make out a thin line stretching across the horizon. Her heart leaped. She could follow the tracks straight into Timber. She wouldn't risk taking a helicopter straight into Timber so she would set it down as soon as she reached the other side of the bridge. She knew that radar coverage was almost non-existent in this area: she and her resistance group had had a rather large part in that fact.  
She looked at her fuel gauge, but it was not that important. The craft was slightly low on fuel, but she need not worry. There was plenty in the tank for the short distance that she had to travel.

The Ragnarok was not the type of craft that you could camouflage with a few branches and tarpaulin, so Selphie had to land several miles away from the relay station. She dropped the power to the ventral engines and the ship slowly descended to the ground. The group hoisted their bergens onto their shoulders and checked their kit. Each carried their chosen weapon in the holster on their hip. On the other side each carried a silenced pistol. A sheathed commando knife was attached to the bergen by Velcro. The five of them wore dark-green camouflage for the night assault. Black suits were incredibly easy to see, as it was the only thing in the night that was black.  
Inside their bergens they carried enough equipment and supplies for seven days. Water bottles, rations, compass, GPS, pencil-beam torches, ammunition for their machine guns as well as stoves, radios and medical equipment. Each SeeD struggled a little at the start with the seventy-pound load strapped to their back, but after a few minutes they were used to it and could move around almost normally. Picking up their machine guns they headed for the bay door.  
Emerging into the twilight, they quickly found cover in a nearby forest. Whispering the instructions, Quistis directed them to follow Squall, who was on point. Zell, as 'tail-end Charlie' held the rear, constantly checking behind him for any movement in the silent and still forest. They had five miles to cover in four hours, and this would be quite easy under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. Every two hundred yards into the forest Squall would check his compass with the torch. He tried to keep heading north-west, but with moving around trees and debris on the forest floor, the bearing started to change. Stepping carefully so as not to break branches, the five walked quietly through the forest.  
SNAP! In the forest even the slightest noise was multiplied a thousand-fold. The lack of all noise makes everyone's ears much more sensitive, and the snap of the branch sounded like a gunshot. Squall stopped dead, squatting to the ground. He turned to look for his team-mates but he could not see them. He fished about inside his backpack and retrieved his IR goggles. Switching them on, he heard the faint hum of the imager, and quickly raised it to his eyes. He scanned the scenery, easily making out his four team-mates, but no other humanoid life signs. Birds flew and mammals scampered around on the floor.  
Squall slowly returned to walking, and gave the hand signal to his compatriots behind him. The barrel of his gun swung from side to side, scanning like his eyes for the slightest disturbance in the night. He found none, and after a few more broken branches, they had made it to the end of the forest. Squall checked the GPS.  
"We've made it about a mile so far," he whispered to his comrades. "A mile in just under an hour. We should make it to the OP in about three hours." The party considered eating some of their rations, but decided against it. They would eat at the observation point.  
The five members started off again, Irvine on point and Selphie bringing up the rear. Irvine brought up his IR goggles, bathing his eyes in a hue of green light. _Why is infra-red green?_ he thought. _Have to ask Zell. He might know._ He briefly scanned the horizon. Seeing absolutely no heat at all, he switched off the goggles to conserve power. They had brought two packs of spare batteries each, but sometimes even those were not enough. Wasting power on a mission such as this was not an option.  
Irvine started their advance to the next ridge, constantly scanning the horizon for the slightest movement. But all was still. He walked to the next ridge. Lights flickered in the distance. Motioning the others, they quickly scampered up to meet him, lying down so that only their heads appeared over the ridge. Getting out his binoculars, Zell looked through them at the facility. "About fifty people by the looks of it. They have trucks, machine gun emplacements and there are two sentries in guard huts elevated above the compound." Quistis nodded.  
"Let's go then, " she said, crawling over the ridge. The last thing that they wanted was a man-shaped silhouette striding across a ridge. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and they made their way towards the facility without any trouble. They made good progress and was about half of a mile away from the perimeter fence when they stopped. "Look for a good OP." A good observation point was a necessity to observe the patrols that the guards made. They noticed with dismay that the guards had dogs. Dogs were an annoying sentry, because measures had to be taken to prevent the dogs from finding you. They would have to stay downwind, and take excretory precautions.  
"Looks like it's 'shitting in cling-film' time," stated Irvine. In a long observation, the observers obviously required to excrete, and faeces had to be wrapped in cling-film and buried so that the dogs could not smell it. Likewise, urine had to be stored in bottles and buried. Empty bottles and rolls of cling-film were brought for precisely this eventuality.  
Squall grimaced as he shuffled along the floor. Zell moved up next to Irvine, and looked him up and down. "I don't think we've got enough cling-film." Irvine glared at him, and Selphie hit Zell.  
"Don't say things like that about Irvy." She hugged her boyfriend, who smiled at Zell. Squall rolled his eyes and shuffled over to a clump of bushes. Burrowing a little underneath the soil, he spoke quietly.  
"I think that this will do as cover. If I can get some of my camouflage net in the right place then this should do just fine. We can probably fit two people here. Quistis?" She nodded, and shuffled over to him. _I wonder why he wanted to be next to me? A year ago I would be in heaven now. Now, what? How do I feel about this?_  
Squall started to gently shift soil from behind the bushes. When he felt that he had done enough, he shuffled into the place and started clipping the branches that were in his way. _I wonder if it was obvious why I asked Quistis? I don't think that I could stand Zell for three days straight. And maybe I might want to talk about Rinoa. Quistis would listen, Quistis always listens._  
Zell moved down the slope until he reached another clump of bushes. _I bet he chose Quistis so he wouldn't have to talk to me._ He started to shift the soil from behind the bushes, and within a few minutes he was inside the bushes. He got out his radio and tuned it to channel seven, the channel chosen for communications beforehand. "This is Zell, I'm in place."  
"Roger that Zell. Quistis and I have finished setting up." The three of them waited for Selphie and Irvine to find a spot. _Maybe it wasn't clever to put the two of them together_, he thought. But then he suddenly remembered. _I'm not in command of this mission._ He looked over at Quistis, who was totally still. _I wonder what she is thinking? Maybe she's pondering why I asked her._ He had a thought.  
"Quistis, I have a question. Have you ever seen a weapon with a long wooden handle and a curved blade at the top of it?" Quistis frowned.  
"I think that I know what you are describing. It's not a weapon, it's a tool. It's used by farmers to cut their crops. Surely you know what a scythe is?" Squall remained expressionless.  
"I have heard of a scythe, but I have never seen one."  
"Well, that's one. Why do you ask?" Squall answered very quickly.  
"No reason. I just saw one, and wondered what it was." _That was a quick answer. Too quick an answer to be truthful. He's definitely hiding something, but then Squall always is._ Quistis nodded once, and let the subject drop. The two SeeD settled in for the rest of the night, looking at the perimeter sentries walking around the compound.

Rinoa banked right when she reached the bridge. Trains had stopped running along the bridge as soon as Galbadia and Esthar had declared war on each other, and so she had little chance of being seen. It had severely affected the trade of Fisherman's Horizon, who relied on the services along the route for export of its manufactures. But they were not complaining too loudly. Better broke than dead, they had thought.  
It was not long now, she thought. The coastline was already visible, a faint line, much like that of the bridge, but this kept getting larger. She couldn't tell when she had passed the coast, she was too high up, but she scouted out a good place to land and went towards it. She did not need circuits, it was a large landing area and she was not going fast enough to warrant that type of landing.  
She looked out of the cockpit. Green and yellow fields filled her view. Hedges criss-crossed the land, going off to the edges of her vision. She could see a herd of cows grazing in a field off to her right, and a few houses and a barn off in the distance. The metal hulk of a tractor stood lifeless to her left, its occupants having left some time ago to tend to their crops. The yellow of the wheat swayed gently in the breeze, the entire field in unison. Trees stood proudly along a riverbank in front of her, about three miles in the distance.  
She could tell from the swaying of the branches that the wind was moving right-to-left, and turned right to face the wind. Whilst this would be unheard of in an aeroplane, landing into the wind was the best plan for a helicopter. Lining up over a large and flat field, she noticed that she was 2500 feet about sea level. She dropped the collective, and the helicopter started to drop, and fifty feet-per-minute. _This will take all day_, she thought, and dropped the collective almost to the bottom. The craft started to fall heavily, dropping at a fast rate. _That's a little too fast_, Rinoa thought, raising the collective a little. To her astonishment the helicopter gained speed. It was past 1250 feet and falling fast.  
"What the hell is happening!" she shouted in frustration as she passed a thousand feet. _You've done it now, Rinoa. You were too inexperienced to fly solo, and you've done something stupid._ She had done something stupid. She had created a vortex ring effect. It happens when the helicopter drops too fast, and cannot be broken out of with the collective. If you raise the collective it feeds more power into the vortex ring and you drop faster. You cannot bottom (fully lower) the collective either, because you cannot drop below the vortex ring.  
"What is happening!!" The helicopter passed 750 feet and showed no signs of stopping, falling lower and lower until… 

Author: the helicopter that Rinoa is flying is based upon the Aérospatiale Alouette III Astazou helicopter, just in case you wondered. If you have never heard of this, it is operated by several countries, including South Africa, India, France and Portugal.

*: Radar has a minimum level, below which it is virtually useless. This is because anything below about a hundred feet gets lost in ground clutter – trees, cars and hills.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	5. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
It seems that I have a little explaining to do.  
Rinoa is piloting a helicopter. I know that it is thought that this action is out of character. Shall we examine this point? Rinoa is a girl who is being very introspective at the moment, questioning the motives that she uses to carry on in life. She is almost at breaking point, believing that her friends are distancing themselves from her. Then when the all run off without telling her, something snaps in her. She has to retreat to the only place where she felt that she was with equals: Timber. She is desperate and probably scared of where her life is going, and as Robert Frost once said, "there's nothing I'm afraid of like scared people." People who have become desperate act out of character. They do things that under normal circumstances they would not even think of. Take, for example a certain S. Leonhart that jumped out into space to rescue Rinoa. OOC indeed. There is, of course, the fact that the only way to get to Timber is by air (all of the trains would be locked down by Galbadia – why would Galbadia leave open a direct route from a SeeD base to their country?).  
As for the military bits – I do understand that maybe I was going a little over the top (I was listening to Holst at the time. Maybe I should stick to Jupiter and Venus instead of Mars :-) ). I just had to include the bit about the wrapping up faeces though, I think it needs to be known by a wider audience :-) The reason for the mission by SeeD is to remind everyone that first and foremost, SeeD is a military organisation, and Squall et al are military officers. Just occasionally, they have to get their hands dirty, as it were. This will probably be the last real large chunk of military stuff, I have to get to the crux of the story in a few chapters.  
Oh yeah, sorry it took so long as well. You might have thought it would be good if it took this long, but you can't have everything.  
All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Five

"The nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten."  
Kemal Atatürk, founder of Turkey   


"What did Jefran say about this?" As the beats of her heart tried to overtake one another, she racked her brain to try and remember. She remembered him say, 'never drop the collective too fast, you'll enter a vortex ring. The only way to get out of…' She must have tuned out before he had finished. _I wasn't paying attention, and it'll be the death of me._  
She threw the cyclic around in an attempt to shake herself free and the craft shook violently and then stopped. '…the only way to get out of it is lateral movement.' She remembered now. _Thanks a lot brain._ Her eyes drooped and her head leant forward. She glanced at the altimeter. _A hundred feet._ As her heart started to return to normal, she lowered the collective a little and the helicopter slowly lowered the rest of the way.  
The craft touched down with a thump and Rinoa let out a sigh of relief. She threw open the glass door and fell out of the helicopter. As she hit the ground, the enormity of what she had just done hit her. _I have just stolen a helicopter from an army._ But there was no other way to get out of Balamb without anyone knowing. She had not wanted to steal an aircraft from SeeD, but there was no other way. She glanced briefly at her compass, and walked off in search of the train tracks that would take her to Timber.  
_I have been such a fool. I thought that I could stay with them, but I cannot. There are things that can never be, even if they should. I want to be with Squall, but I cannot be with SeeD. They have other things to do, they have monsters to fight, missions to go on. I will always be an outsider there. I will never quite fit in._ The place to which she was walking would accept her though. They did before, and Watts and Zone did not change.  
There were times in her life that she had felt happy, when her mother was alive, when she was in Timber, in the Ragnarok with Squall. But the only one she could return to was Timber. She could once again run around with the Forest Owls. The train was long gone, the Galbadians had found it, but the people were still there. She spotted the train tracks in the distance.  
_God I'm hungry,_ she thought. The only thing that she had brought with her was a compass, and she was beginning to regret that decision. But the euphoria of roaming the countryside in search of her beloved country, her adopted homeland, outweighed the feelings of hunger and thirst. Soon she would be home, back with the familiar surroundings and faces that she had seen every day for years. When Squall came to find her – she knew that he would – she would try to convince him to stay with her in Timber, at least for a little while. With the man she loved in the country she loved, she would be truly happy.

Squall looked on in horror as the perimeter guards slowly closed in on Zell's position. By the looks of it, they had not spotted the SeeD yet, but it was only a matter of time. "What is that there?" said one guard to the other. He shrugged and Squall steeled himself, readying the sights on his machine gun over the lead sentry. Zell was scared stiff, seeing two dark forms approaching him. He was ready to burst out of his hiding place when machine gun fire erupted. The first guard dropped immediately, and the look of shock barely had time to form on the face of the second guard before he faced the same fate.  
Quistis' calm voice came over the radio. "Gloves are off." The five SeeD emerged from their hiding places as the sounds of alarms sounded throughout the compound in front of them. "Let's do it." The five regrouped and jogged down the hillside. Seeing movement on top of one of the buildings, Zell loosed off a few rounds from his machine gun, and they landed on the other side of the compound.  
"I hate guns!" Zell threw the weapon down on the ground and pulled his fists up into a fighting stance. "FIRAGA." A ball of fire streaked across the night sky and hit the man, vaporising him. "YEAH, that's more like it!" He fired off a few more fireballs in the general direction, setting buildings alight. Galbadian soldiers dropped to the ground for cover, and pulled out their guns, training them on the almost invisible forms of the five SeeD.  
Bullets flew about them in all directions and dirt danced in front of them. Squall squinted through the sight at a target and squeezed off a few rounds. Blood pouring from his chest, the Galbadian soldier dropped to the ground in spasm. A few more well-aimed bullets later, and the gunners that were along the perimeter were eliminated. Quistis motioned, and Selphie and Zell advanced down the slope, Selphie throwing her gun down to the ground and Zell pulling his fists up.  
The pair hid behind a building as two Galbadian soldiers ran past. Stepping out from their cover, Selphie swung the flail, smashing the first guard a direct blow to the head. The other soldier was too preoccupied looking at the half of a face that his comrade had left to see the right hook that Zell was aiming for him. Cracking skull makes a horrible sound, the pieces of bone sliding over each other and scraping at the edges. Blood poured out of the wound as the second soldier joined the first on the ground. The two SeeD jumped over the blood pooled in the dirt and made their way towards the main building.  
Irvine moved silently along the other side of the building, checking all around him when the wall to his left exploded. Dropping to the ground in a gambol, the Galbadian raised his rifle and looked for the target. He was still searching when a slug ripped through his coat, slicing through skin and smashing into his scapula. Blood pouring down his long-coat, Irvine fell to the ground. The fragments of his shoulder blade scratched against each other making the cowboy wince with pain. Nerves across his chest fired off, overwhelming his brain with the pain.  
Squall ran down the hillside, shooting from the hip. The shots mainly went wide, but the Galbadians did the wise thing and stayed behind cover. He reached Irvine and checked over the wound. It seemed a simple entry wound, and he cast curaga on it, watching as the skin pulled closed around the bullet, leaving no mark. _If I had only done this on my scar._ But he did not mind that much. He had begun to see his scar as a defining part of his character. It reminded him of Seifer ever time that he saw it in the mirror. That was good, because it made sure that he never went down the same path that his Doppelgänger had taken. He had let his desire, his _dream_ get the better of him. He was a changed man now. Well, Squall would believe that when he saw it.  
Irvine lay back, then scooped his legs forward, landing on his feet in a well-practised manoeuvre. Nodding at his comrade, the cowboy resumed his walk, shooting whenever he saw a target. Quistis had joined them now, and together the five SeeDs closed in on the main building.

Technician Third Grade Sinope Callisto tapped away at the keyboard in front of him. In another few hours he would be done, and could get home to his wife and children. He needed to patch things up with her – they had had a fight the night before and he had left without saying anything, taking his toast from the toaster and buttering it in silence. He had smiled at his children and left without saying a word.  
It was wrong of him, he knew. It happened every so often, he would have a bad day at work, and come home looking for a fight. Sometimes, when his wife had had a hard day too, she would give it to him. It was not as if he didn't love Lysithea. They had been married for twenty years, and except for the odd hiccup every now and again, things had gone fine. They had two wonderful children, Amalthea and Carne. Amalthea was the younger, at ten years old. She had shoulder-length blonde hair and a smile that made people's days. She wanted to be a racing driver when she grew up, Sinope thought, a slight smile playing across his lips.  
Carne was different. Much more introvert and thoughtful, even at fifteen. He had aspirations, but they were nothing like his sister's. He had said once that he had wanted to be a doctor, to help people like his mother did. Sinope shook his head in amazement. He had said this since he was eight years old, when his peers had all wanted to be astronauts or explorers. He still wanted to be a doctor, and Sinope thought that he had a very good chance. The intelligence behind the azure eyes was clear. His mannerisms were always subdued, as if he was watching rather than participating in life. Sometimes it chilled him to think of the way he looked when he started school. His eyes had swept the form of the buildings, taking in every sight and sweeping over every child playing in the yard before he got out of the car and walked, no, _strode_ towards the front gate.  
The father looked up from his work, trying to focus. He had three more relay boards to examine, and each one took over an hour. Whatever they were doing here, it was using up relay boards extremely fast. He uncurled the connectors from the multimeter and started testing the thin strips of metal on the circuit board. Today he was doing mind-numbing work, a dull monotony that made every day the same. This day had started out like every other, and it had continued along the same course.  
The man stood up to stretch his legs. For over an hour he had sat there. He was moving around when he heard running outside the door. _I wonder what's doing on_, he thought idly, but did nothing. He had too much work to bother himself with curiosity. The forty-year old walked around his small office for a few minutes, loosening the tendons in his muscles. He tried to rub the circulation back into his legs, then gave up and sat back down.  
_I shall have to apologise_, he thought. _I wasn't at fault, but that rarely matters. If I apologise, then she'll be just fine, and we can move on._ he told himself. _Move on to the next fight_, another part of his brain thought sarcastically. He brushed a strand of blonde hair from his eyes, tucking it behind his ear, and extracted the pencil from behind it. He scribbled a few numbers on a piece of paper, and rested the clipboard down onto the work-surface. _It was a simple network of transistors_, he thought, not for the first time. _A trained chimpanzee* could do it if you gave him the equipment_. But they were not asking a chimpanzee to do the work, they were asking him, so he was sitting in a cramped office running currents through pieces of wire trying to find the burnt out components.  
_I had used to have ambitions_, the man thought, his blue eyes narrowing a little. _I had wanted things, when I was young and in college. I should have studied harder, passed my exams. Then maybe I could have been designing these boards, rather than fixing them._ But it paid the rent, so he did the work. The money was not excellent, and the career prospects were getting your own coffee machine in the office. The man sighed, and contemplated his future.

Squall silently moved his fingers, counting with Irvine. _One, two, three_. Squall smashed the handle of his gunblade against the door and Irvine gambolled in, shooting at the only man he saw in the small office. The civilian fell back in his chair, a single bullet having passed through his forehead. Squall looked at the azure eyes, now lifeless, and quickly moved on, scanning the room for any other people. Seeing none, they left the blonde-haired man lying in his chair and moved back into the corridor.

Kiros strode into the office of the President of Esthar. Laguna looked up from the report that he was pretending to read and recognised his lifelong friend. "Is there anything I can do for you, Kiros?" Kiros smiled a little.  
"A few things. The few dissenters are active again." There was a small minority in Esthar who were unhappy with Laguna's rule, but did not really do that much about it. Those in prosperity rarely change those in control, and Esthar had never been more prosperous. The war with Galbadia had entered a stalemate situation, neither side giving up, but not wishing to try to gain a foothold in their enemy's territory.  
"It's the normal stuff, a few leaflets, a few jokes. There's a particularly funny one that I thought you might like." Laguna raised his eyebrows, and Kiros continued. "It goes 'what's the difference between Laguna Loire and the God of Love firing an arrow through two people?" Laguna cocked his head, but said nothing. " 'One's a Cupid stunt, and the other's a stupid…' "  
"That's all I need to hear," Laguna interjected quickly. "I was in the army, remember?" Kiros laughed. "Other than these things, they are doing nothing, right?" Kiros nodded. "Well then, how are our SeeD squadron doing? Have we heard from them yet?"  
"No, Laguna. I still don't understand that decision. We have our own special forces to do that kind of mission, and we wouldn't have to pay them a million Gil to do it." Kiros was occasionally surprised at Laguna's intelligence. It was there, but hidden. It only showed itself every now and again, but when it did, it was marked.  
"We had to call in SeeD, both for the deniability of the mission, and because we need them on our side. They will find it hard going to work for Galbadia now, having accepted a mission from us. SeeD is a powerful ally to have, Kiros." The man nodded thoughtfully.  
"Of course, they don't need SeeD. They have the Shadow Men." Laguna winced. The only organisation better trained than SeeD, the Shadow Men were born soldiers. An elite group of only about fifty soldiers, they are drawn out of the ranks of the Galbadian army. Nobody in the secret organisation is officially alive. They all drop off the face of the earth, and resurface as moving dead men, working out of a small base in the Kashkabald desert. They train for days in gruelling conditions. As one story goes, in the first few weeks of training the hopefuls are dropped two hundred miles away from base with nothing but a compass. Those that make it back continue their training. They were fearsome fighters, but Galbadia used them sparely. This was probably the best way of keeping them mysterious.  
"Yeah, I suppose that is something. But we have SeeD on our side, and Balamb is not too far away from siding with us. The UCC are staying neutral, and I don't think that that will change in the Council of Ministers they're holding in a few days time." The UCC, of United Countries of Centra, was a bloc formed about a decade ago. People who were not fond of the UCC called them UCoC. Each of the twenty-two countries of the UCC had little land and a pitiful army with which to defend it. However, as all nations within Centra were the same a kind of military stalemate had arisen, and peace had broken out. There had not been a war in Centra since they declared independence from their mother countries four decades ago. When the Centran civilisation had been destroyed by the Lunar Cry eighty years ago, Galbadia, Panavia, Dollet and Timber were quick to send colony ships to rebuild the continent.  
"You never know Laguna, people have been known to change sides because they perceive that an advantage could be gained." Laguna nodded in assent.  
"Yes, the plants are always greener on the other side."  
"Grass."  
"What?"  
"The saying goes, 'the grass is always greener on the other side,' Laguna." His friend looked at him sceptically.  
"Are you sure?" Kiros nodded. "Whatever, I don't care. Sentiment's there." Kiros nodded.  
"Indeed."

Rinoa walked slowly along the train tracks. Her head lowered, she didn't see the skyline of Timber until it was almost upon her. She walked through the city entrance and was surprised to see no-one about. Then she looked around.  
All around he lay rubble, the remnants of buildings which had once stood so proudly, a monument to the city. The skyline had been decimated. The tallest and most imposing structures that Timber owned lay in ruins, the pitiful piles of bricks hiding the original splendour and majesty of the buildings that she was so used to. People's houses had been razed to the ground, leaving only bricks and mortar where structures had once stood. A few wisps of smoke rose out of a recent pile of ashes as the dying embers of a fire glowed in the cloudless afternoon. She looked around in shock at the devastation and destruction dealt to this small country and tears welled in her eyes. Galbadia had done this! They had destroyed her home!  
She stumbled through the streets examining the devastation around her. Everywhere she looked, houses had been turned into rockeries. The country of Timber was a car parking lot, dust-swept concrete and rubble. The occasional wall still stood, pock-marked with machine gun fire. The few cars that were left had been crushed from tank tracks. The cobbled streets and paved roads were destroyed, craters dotting them where mortar fire had landed in the city.  
On the pavements (sidewalks), a few people sat huddled together, dust and grime streaked down their faces. Their clothes were in tatters, and blood stained what was not covered in grey dust. Children cried, waiting for their parents who would not come back. Bodies lay strewn in the road, some with no arms or legs, some with a pitiful excuse for a head. Those who had been lying in the road when the tanks came were crushed, bone giving way, being snapped like twigs as the gigantic tracks drove over them.  
Rinoa tried to survey the absolute damage, when she saw a horrific sight. One of the bodies seemed too familiar. Fearing the worst, she walked over to it, and slowly tilted the head to face her. She reeled back unable to breathe as the face of Watts, coated in blood and grime, stared straight at her, his eyes boring a hole in her. She quickly shut his eyelids, unable to look at the stare for a moment longer. She knelt by the corpse and started weeping, tears gushing from her eyes in mourning for her friend's passing.  
She did not notice someone slowly walking up behind her until the woman spoke. "Rinoa?" she asked shakily. The young woman wiped away her tears and turned to face the voice. She saw a woman in her thirties, with short, brown hair, covered in mud and dirt. Her clothes were stained, but she was standing up, not lying down. That was good news. "Are you okay?" A question that Rinoa couldn't really answer. She knelt there, unable to speak. "Here, let me help you up." She offered out a hand and Rinoa grasped it uncertainly. Pulling back, the woman hoisted Rinoa to her feet and she stood, a little shakily.  
"What happened?" she managed to get out.  
"It was horrible. We were attacked by the Galbadians. They destroyed everything that they could see. They bombed us, and killed everyone who didn't hide. Some of us escaped, and are hiding in the forests, but they slaughtered everyone they could see. You found Watts, we haven't had time to move all of the bodies yet." Rinoa was stunned.  
"You mean there's more dead?" She could hardly comprehend the facts that percolated through her mind, throwing her brain into disarray. The woman nodded.  
"We've counted over five hundred and fifty so far, including most of the resistance cells. I'm sorry, but we haven't found anyone from the Forest Owls alive." Rinoa blanched, shaking her head.  
"I can't…I can't stay here. I have to go."  
"Go where?"  
"Anywhere!" she screamed. "Anywhere but here," she said quietly. "Are any of the trains open?" The woman nodded slowly.  
"There is a very limited service to Balamb. That's about it. The other tracks are destroyed, as is the station." Rinoa thanked the girl as best she could and plodded towards the train station, her head bowed. _How could they do such a thing. Five _hundred_ dead._ She could hardly imagine that. She was still reeling from the information when she handed over the money for the ticket and boarded the train.

Squall watched Selphie set the charges. Pulling out a few pounds of C-4 plastic explosive from her backpack, she moulded it around one of supporting struts. Two electrodes stuck out of the C-4, and wire trailed about three feet to a radio antenna. A simple press of a button would bring that strut down. The frequency was the same for all twenty-three radio-controlled detonators. Plastic explosive covered all of the major supporting struts for the communications tower. In just a few minutes, Galbadia would be without its main communications facility, part of the doctrine for C³I† warfare.  
"Are there any survivors?" Squall asked. Irvine shook his head. "The total dead?"  
"Military personnel, approximately three hundred and seventy. Civilian personnel, about a hundred and eighty." Squall shook his head sadly. They had killed that many people. But those were the orders, and as SeeDs they followed the orders that they were given. The five young men and women slowly walked out of the facility, Selphie hopping from foot to foot and holding out the detonator in front of her.  
"Hurry! I want to blow it up." The five SeeDs gathered pace, partly to please Selphie, and partly because they wanted to get home as well. The soldiers emerged into the daylight and Selphie asked again. "Can I blow it up now?" Quistis shook her head.  
"Let's get a bit further. I don't really want it falling on me." When they reached the top of the hillside, Selphie looked expectantly at Quistis, and she relented. Selphie pushed her finger down on the red – it just has to be red – button, and two hundred pounds of C-4 exploded simultaneously. The noise was horrific, but someone with very good ears may just have picked out a 'WHOO-HOO'. 

Author: Kudos if you spotted the moons. (Callisto, Sinope, Lysithea, Amalthea and Carne are moons of Jupiter.) As for the bit about Sinope Callisto, I was trying to make some people think about the loss endured by people in war. When a tragedy occurs involving one or two deaths, we think about it more deeply than when a hundred or a thousand die. Joseph Stalin said it best, "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths, is a statistic." The other bit, about the fact that both the Galbadians and SeeD had killed the same amount, well, I was just trying to make a point, OK?

*: I'm assuming that they have primates on this planet. Otherwise, from where would they have evolved?  
†: C³I stands for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, the main…things…that should be blown up in a war.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	6. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
I'm interested: does this make sense to Americans? This might sound a little strange, but as well as differences in spelling and the occasional different word, the British have different grammatical structures and phrases (like 'at sixes and sevens' for instance) which as far as I know Americans have never heard of. I was just wondering, that's all.  
All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Six

"He reads much, he is a great observer  
And he looks quite through the deeds of men."  
William Shakespeare   


Squall opened his eyes. It looked all too familiar. A white stone floor, cold to the touch was underneath his fingers. At first, he thought that he was no longer on the Ragnarok, that he had landed somewhere, then the memories of the other night came back. The walls were blood red, he remembered. The man looked up, craning back his neck. Sure enough, the walls were the same deep colour that he remembered before, the same deep red that his mind's eye kept seeing, all through the action of the previous day. He didn't know why the colour seemed to burn into his brain, leaving an afterimage so vivid it was as though he was still there. _I'm not even here_, he thought, but didn't put much effort into believing it. His surroundings felt so real, the stone beneath his hands so cold that his body felt that this was real. That was enough for his mind to go along. He stood up, ignoring the pain shooting across his quadriceps.  
The walk down the corridor was uneventful, and he reached the end of it quickly. It ended in blackness, dark as pitch. But he could see no wall, and reached out to brush the darkness. His fingertips passed straight through, and he pulled back his hand quickly. The fog in his brain was still there, and it stopped him even pondering what he was doing as the eighteen-year old stepped through the blackness.  
It was a cavern. The boundaries of the cavern were so far away that he couldn't see anything. Nothing but darkness. He walked a little forward in the darkness. He could not even see where he was going, or what he was walking on. Nothing but darkness. _Have I been here?_ he questioned, but could not find an answer. "Mr. Loire, you are right on schedule."  
Squall spun on his heels to see what talked. The total darkness had gone, and there was light. The walls were still too far away to be seen, but the floor, a hard, terracotta-coloured brick, was visible. It stretched as far as he could see. There was a figure standing before him, grasping a scythe. His hood obscured his face. He was standing next to a wooden table. The table was of simple design, rectangular with four straight posts at the corners, and made of unpolished oak. The shrouded figure traced the grain with his gloved hand, stopping at a knot. He motioned to a chair. Squall noticed that there were two chairs there, very simple in design, like the table, and like the table made out of oak. He stepped forward slowly, watching the figure all of the time.  
"Why do you fear me so? You are wrong to, the quicker you embrace me the sooner it will all be over with. We can get back to our real lives, then. You don't think I have better things to do than sit here, waiting for you?" The hooded figure took the other seat. "Tell me, have you thought about our last encounter?" Squall nodded. "Have you…discussed it with anyone?" Squall licked his lips and swallowed, trying to lubricate his throat.  
"No, I haven't." Squall thought that he looked puzzled.  
"Why?" Leonhart shrugged.  
"It's just a weird dream." The figure was annoyed, Squall knew.  
"Have you learned nothing? You claim to be a student, yet you can not even learn from your experiences." It was Squall's turn to look puzzled. "When was the last time that you had a 'weird dream', to borrow a phrase? Did you not find out that it was extremely important, that without it the world as we know it would not have existed? " All around him the scenery changed, until he was standing in grass, about knee high. He could see himself, standing in a forest. Selphie, Zell, Quistis and Rinoa were there. Zell stood next to Quistis. "Was it Laguna again?" Selphie nodded frantically.  
"Sir Laguna is in big trouble! I hope he'll be OK…" Quistis looked a little puzzled at her little sleep.  
"Doesn't seem like the first time for you all. What is this?" It was then that Squall saw himself move. He saw his head move from side to side, taking in all of his comrades. He could hear his earlier thoughts, they beat through his head like a steam train. _If it were just me, I could tell the others it was only a crazy dream._ Then he and his friends started to fade. The sky turned from blue to black, and the trees disappeared. The forest floor turned from green to terracotta. Squall was left facing the hooded figure.  
"Just a crazy dream? Lucky for you it wasn't, huh? You managed to save humanity, but can you save your sanity?" The figure disappeared, and Squall felt this world slip away from him.

"I'm sorry but Commander Leonhart is not here. You will have to wait until he returns, Mr. President. I'll inform Squall that you have called, and he'll phone you back." Laguna nodded and the image disappeared off the screen, blackness returning. _Of course, he's in Galbadia risking his life for _our_ war. Maybe I should have sent our special forces after all._  
"What do you think, Kiros?" The man looked up, startled at the question.  
"Think about what?"  
"Was I right about sending SeeD in to fight our war? We have soldiers who do that here, don't we? That's what we pay them to do." Kiros sighed. _Another long day_.  
"Laguna, do you think that, or are you thinking, 'should I have sent Squall?' because there's a world of difference. After all, that's what SeeD are paid for as well. If everyone thought that way your son would be redundant, along with the other mercenaries there. You're feeling protective towards him. That is normal. But you might have to accept that he'll get in danger once in a while.  
"Let's face it, it's not really a highly dangerous mission. They're only going to blow up a communications tower. There have been much more dangerous missions they've been on, like defeating Ultimecia. That was a tough mission. Compared with that, this is child's play." He could see that he was getting through. Laguna had started to nod halfway through his little speech, and was continuing now.  
"You know, I remember when I told Squall that I was his father. It was very hard, but I managed it in the end." Kiros smirked.  
"Yeah, you did. I can't say that it was a pretty sight, though. Maybe if you had practised the speech a little more you might have been able to say it in one go, without having to stop and walk around to straighten out your muscles." Laguna flashed Kiros a withering look.  
"I did not get cramp when I talked to Squall! I get cramp when I'm nervous, normally when I'm talking to a woman, though. I can never find the right words. I try and try, but whenever I start speaking, blood pours through my brain and my tongue stops working. The only thing I can say is, 'AHHHHH'. It's quite embarrassing."  
"Embarrassing for people who are your friends as well. There's a thin line between bravery and stupidity, and when it comes to women, you can't decide which side you want to be on. You were brave enough to go to talk to Julia. I was impressed, but you looked pretty pitiful when you did. For some reason, though, she didn't seem to mind, although I have no idea why."  
"Maybe it was just my natural good looks and charm."  
"Or maybe she was just doing charity work."  
"You're just jealous, man." Kiros smiled, but didn't answer back. "Anyway, have I got some work to do? No? Well, in that case, I'm having a nap."  
"Laguna, it's only ten thirty in the morning."  
"Tut tut, Kiros. President needs his sleep if he's to do all of those presidential things he does." Kiros rolled his eyes. _Another long day_.

The Ragnarok made its way across the ocean, flying gracefully. Selphie sat in the pilot's seat, holding the joystick with both hands. Quistis and Squall were writing a report for the headmaster, which left Zell and Irvine with nothing to do. Zell had taken the time to finish a little project he was working on, and Irvine was on his way up to the cockpit. "Hey, Selphie. How's it going?"  
"Great! How about you?" _How could that girl be so happy?_ Irvine asked himself.  
"Fine, I guess." _How could that guy not be happy?_ Selphie asked herself. "What are you doing after we land." Selphie smiled, which was fine because he couldn't see her face. _Now I know what you're here for, Irvine._  
"Oh, nothing much. Why, d'you wanna go somewhere?" It was Irvine's turn to smile, his face lit up like a Christmas tree. Selphie could see nothing in the reflection from the glass of Irvine's face, so she had to guess.  
"I was thinking you might want to go for a walk on the Rinaul Coast after debriefing. If you've got nothing better to do, of course." He added hurriedly. Another smile from the petite girl. _Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes._  
"Yeah, sure." _Yes! Maybe I can truly tell her how I feel tonight._  
Selphie leaned back in her chair, smiling softly. _It's a kind of light relationship. We're just friends. But I wonder if I can tell him how I really feel tonight. Maybe he feels the same way. Who knows?_ The true extent of her feelings had not been clear to her until just a few weeks ago, when Irvine was off in Galbadia doing something. He had been gone just a few days, and she missed him. She had missed others before, when single-person missions had taken place. She had felt the same feelings, of missing their little ways or their conversation. But there was something else, something deeper which gnawed at her soul when he was gone. She felt incomplete.  
At first she thought that it was just because she had known him since they were little children, even if she had forgotten. But then she remembered that she had known everyone apart from Rinoa for just as long. The only other conclusion surprised her as much as it would have surprised Irvine. She…loved him? It was as much of a question as a statement. Possibly, she thought. _I might love him._ But she didn't know the signs, she was so unused to what she felt that she couldn't identify it. She sighed, thinking about it. Her hands moved a little on the controls, trying to show Irvine that she was doing something. The Ragnarok virtually flew itself. So much so that she often used autopilot and just sat here thinking happy thoughts.  
_I wonder what she's thinking_ Irvine said to himself. He saw slight movement from the flight stick, guided by her expert hands. He moved his arm up to stroke his hair, and winced at the pain. _Damn aspirin must have worn off. I can't wait to get back to Garden and have the doc patch me up. This shoulder injury is really starting to hurt._ Curaga could only do so much, and a shattered shoulder blade had to be treated with something more than a simple spell. It would take some nifty re-constructive surgery from Doctor Kadowaki to get his shoulder back to normal, but the doctor had shown extreme skill before.  
"Hey Sefie, can we postpone the walk until tonight, I want to go see the doc about my shoulder. The pain's coming back." Selphie turned around in the chair, a look of concern spread across her face. "It's not that bad." Then he realised something. "Eyes on the road, dear! Mach 4 is too fast to be hitting mountains!" Selphie quickly spun back, settling into the chair. She playfully gave the flight stick a little jiggle, throwing Irvine off-balance for a few seconds. "Funny girl." Selphie giggled for a few seconds, leaving Irvine to mope over his battle scars.

"How does this sound, Squall?" The instructor passed over the sheet of paper to Squall, who held out his hand. He quickly scanned over the page, reading the words quickly.  
"Yes, this sounds fine." Quistis looked at her ex-pupil.  
"Is there something wrong, Squall? If you want to talk, I'm here." Squall thought about it for a second, and then dismissed the gesture. It was just a dream. A _really_ weird dream, but a dream nevertheless. What would be the point in telling her about it? Except maybe that she could get him committed? _No_, he thought, _the entire thing would be pointless. I have better things to do with my time than mess about thinking about stupid dreams that I have._  
"You really should talk about it. Something is obviously bothering you. If you told me, maybe I could help you. I've known you for quite a few years, remember?"  
"Whatever." Squall picked himself up off the chair and stalked out of the room, leaving Quistis alone in the forward compartment. She leaned back against the chair, trying to sort out her thoughts. _My friend is in trouble_, she thought. _Maybe it is something I can help him with. Probably not, when has he ever asked for help, especially from _me_? I think he'd rather go insane or die than admit that he needed someone. But everyone needs someone, even me._ She stopped suddenly.  
_Wait, when did this to being about him and start being about me? I think for hours, in the quiet solace of my dormitory, occasionally crying._ She thought back to an ancient Dollic phrase that she had picked up once. 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' – Who guards the guards themselves? Who counsels those who counsel others? She wished that she knew. Perhaps, some day, one of them would ask her if _she_ was okay, if she was fine. Being slightly older than them, and for a year, in a position of authority over Squall and Zell, she had come to be a sort of motherly figure to the group. When one of them needed advice, they came to her. She was not eternally happy, like Selphie, forever depressing like Squall, or too emotional like Zell. But just once she would like to have the mantle of motherhood removed, to become like one of them, even for just a little while. This burden weighed heavy on her shoulders, but it was one she bore, if not gladly, then without objection. Regardless of her matriarchal position in their group she was still one of them.  
As an instructor, she had tried to communicate with her students. She had believed that the best way to teach was not from the pulpit but from the nave. If she could just become their peer then maybe they would regard her advice as something more than useless little maxims thrown out by the faculty. If she could show them that she had been, and still was, one of them at heart, then maybe what he said to them would be taken in more receptively. It was a technique that had worked for some people. But not for Seifer, he had just abused the system that she employed. Not for Squall, he was beyond helping. That was probably why she got fired, the instructor presumed. The hierarchy considered her more unorthodox teaching methods, not as progressive, but as a sign of weakness on her part. She was so much younger than most of the rest of the faculty. Perhaps this was also a cause.  
She had come back from the battle with Ultimecia determined to regain her instructor's license, and she got it. She now taught from her desk, the same as the rest of the faculty. She was not a threat to them now, she had thought. _They might have had to accept that my teaching style _was_ better, and that would be defeat for them, something that they would not be able to handle._ She half-regretted her decision to back down. It was a shift in principles. _No, it isn't, I still hold my principles, I just can no longer act on them,_ she thought with a snort. _Way to go, Quisty_. "Way to go."

Rinoa took another step into the bar. She knew that she shouldn't do this, somewhere deep inside told her that she could still work things out. But that part was smaller now, its voice straining to be heard. The rest of her wanted desperately to forget, and she would try forgetting the only way she knew how. She noticed a man drinking quietly, sitting on a stool in front of the bar itself. He sat there without moving. _Maybe he has inner demons as well,_ she thought idly, walking over to where he was.  
The man grunted a greeting and went back to nursing his drink, a whiskey, she noticed. That seemed good to her. It was a quick way to forget, but hardly a ladylike drink, she thought, with a hint of sarcasm. The bartender sidled up to her. "What'll it be, young lady?"  
"Can I have a vodka and orange, please?" the bartender nodded, and turned around to mix the drink.  
"I'll pay for that if you want, little lady." She turned to see a man, looking about twenty-five, and clearly more than a little drunk. He staggered over to where she was sitting, breathing a heavy dose of alcohol over her. She backed off for the awful smell, and politely refused. "What? You refuse the kind offering of a gentleman." She could tell he was getting angry, and beginning to regret that she had not brought her weapon with her. She needed to cool metal against her hip to steady her nerves. Without it, she was defenceless.  
"Maybe you didn't hear her, but I believe the lady said that she did not want your money. Would you kindly leave her alone." This came from the man with the whiskey. He had stirred, and when he had turned, she caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were blue, a shade deeper than Squall's, but had a coldness about them. She felt the tiniest bit afraid of those eyes. They looked like they had killed before, and had no compunction about doing it again.  
"You the fuck are you?" The drunken man swung a punch at him, but he easily dodged it, catching the man's hand. He quickly turned it over and started pressing down on the knuckles. The first snapped and the drunkard howled in pain. He quickly brought down his free arm onto the man's elbow, and a sickening crunch of bone followed quickly. The man screamed again, and the whiskey drinker let go. The drunkard almost fell over, gripping his broken arm lightly. It was bent in the opposite direction, and jagged bits of bone had surface through the skin.  
"Bartender, I suggest that you call an ambulance." The man turned around and sat at his stool, finishing off the rest of his drink. "Can I have another?" The barman nodded. He had seen injuries aplenty in his boxing career, but that was merciless. He had looked away when the man had brought down his fist on the poor guy's elbow. It would take months for the bone to heal, if it ever did.  
"Thank you. I don't even know who you are." Rinoa tried to act grateful, but she was mostly relieved and a little shook up by the whole incident.  
"I am Chystall," the man said, his voice flat, like her Squall. _My Squall_, she thought, _yes, he is my Squall. This man reminds me a little of him._ "And you are...?" Rinoa regained her composure.  
"I'm Rinoa, Rinoa Heartilly." The man frowned a little.  
"Heartilly, where have I heard that name before? Your mother wasn't Julia Heartilly, was she?" Rinoa nodded. "I'm sorry I brought it up. It must have been hard for you."  
"It can be at times. What about your parents?"  
"Both dead. Dead for years. That sounded a little too depressing. Can we change the subject?" The girl nodded, and he continued. "How about you, why are you here?"  
"I don't know. Nowhere else to go. My father and I don't really get along, and my home was destroyed by the Galbadian Army. I could go back to Garden, but I don't know if I can." The man smiled a little. _Shall I try now,_ he thought, _or can it wait?_ He had decided before he had asked himself the question.  
"I used to know a SeeD. He was very strong and intelligent. But you could kind of tell them from the way that they carried themselves. I don't know why, but I don't think that you're a SeeD. You probably are, and are offended that I said so…" She cut him off.  
"No, you're right. I'm not a SeeD. My friends are, and I kind of got mixed up with them. It's a long story."  
"I'm not going anywhere. Are you?" Rinoa relented, and explained the events of the tumultuous months when her SeeD friends and her fought and defeated Ultimecia. The man waited patiently until she finished relating the story to him. "That still doesn't answer the question. Why are you here? You obviously have friends that you can rely on. Not everyone has that."  
"I don't think I can face them. I ran out on them, I ran out because I felt alienated from my friends. They are all SeeD, all members of a big thing, and I'm the only one not a part of it. Everyone I meet regards me as an outsider. They hardly ever let anyone in to Garden, even just temporarily. But because I'm the commander's girlfriend, they let me in. Preferential treatment leaves people bitter at you. I know, because I've had it all my life."  
"You have friends, Rinoa. That is a great joy. My friends are dead or long gone. I wish that I had someone to talk to. I sit here, drinking. That is what I do. I had used to be someone, but I lost. I took on the world, and lost. I lost, probably because I had no-one to back me up when the going got tough. When things got hard, I had no support, and so I capitulated. You have that support, people who'll be there for you. Can you turn your back on these people who regard you as a friend? No man is an island, entire of itself. I tried to be, and I got sucked under because of it. Don't let the same thing happen to you. You have a bright future, I only have a bright past."  
"It is so hard, Chystall. But I have to try, don't I." The man nodded gravely. "OK, I'll try. If I'm strong enough, I can do anything. Thank you, Chystall."  
"Don't mention it, Miss Heartilly. Save it for after you're back with your friends. Helping someone avoid the experiences that I endured is reward enough." Rinoa smiled, a brilliant flash that lit up the man's heart. _Squall should consider himself lucky_, he thought. She rose, and floated off towards the door. "Until next time Miss Heartilly," he said to the door, raising his glass and downing it in a gulp. 

Author: You might like this – I heard a really sick quote the other day, 'writing is the second most fun thing someone can do by themselves'. One of three things happens now: you laugh, you screw your face up in disgust or you look puzzled. Which one will it be?  
The Dollic phrase is really Latin. My spell checker had real problems with that. Part seven up soon. My God, I'm at part seven! And I've not run out of ideas. (Well, you be the judge of that). As always, reviews are appreciated, be they encouragement or scathing criticism.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	7. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
I don't know whether anyone noticed this, but the bloke Chystall was actually way back in Chapter Two. I just didn't mention his name. And Squall's already had one of those dreams. As for the alcohol bit, I'm used to going into bars and pubs. In Britain you only have to be eighteen, so Rinoa and the rest would be able to get served. This is different to the US, where I believe (not sure) that it is 21.  
All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Seven

"In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."  
H G Wells   


"I have to congratulate you on a job well done." Cid was in his office, talking to the SeeD soldiers that had just destroyed a Galbadian communications tower. "I read the report that you created, and I am very pleased with your performance. Although Irvine is still in the infirmary, I have been informed by Doctor Kadowaki that he should be fine in a few hours.  
"Esthar reports that Galbadian units are far less organised along the entire length of the front, and their aeroplanes are not even flying sorties any more. Now, we should look at the possible subsequent missions that Esthar might send us on.  
"Now, intelligence indicates that there is a build-up of military officers at this location." Cid spread out a rolled up map of the western seaboard of Galbadia. "There is a possibility that a surgical strike by special forces could take out a sizeable chunk of Galbadia's military hierarchy. If Esthar knows of this strategic meeting – we can only assume that they do – they may either send in SeeD or use their own forces. It depends on how much money they have to spend, I suppose.  
"But I don't want you to think about that now. You have succeeded in your mission, and you deserve a reward for a job well done. Take a few days off, enjoy yourself. I know it'll be hard Squall, but try." Squall narrowed his eyes at the headmaster. "Calm down, it was only a suggestion." The man chuckled. "Give my regards to Irvine if you see him. I'd go myself, but…" He gestured expansively at the mounds of paperwork in front of him. The SeeD nodded and turned to depart. "Oh, and Squall." He turned, facing the headmaster with a look of mild annoyance. "I think you should read this." He tapped his finger a few times on a manila folder, and Squall reached towards it. "Maybe you should sit down before reading it." Squall glanced at the label on the front of it. It was upside-down, but he could still read it. 'Incident #238/0913, stolen helicopter.' Squall looked back at the headmaster quizzically. "Just read it, all will be explained." Cid gestured to the chair in front of him, and Squall obediently sat down.  
'Between 11:32 and 11:35 hours yesterday Rinoa Heartilly entered the helicopter storage hangar, and left with a Class-3 Assault/Transport helicopter. There were no casualties, and no damage caused.' He stopped reading long enough to whisper a soft, "Rinoa?" 'Subject entered the facility through the south door, and proceeded to the north side of the hangar, where she opened the hangar door. Whilst it was opening, she started the helicopter motor, and turned the machine around. Subject then taxied aircraft to helicopter pad number three and executed TOWC. There were no transmissions from subject's aircraft, designated X-ray One. After Take-Off Without Clearance, subject flew roughly south for several minutes before appearing on Balamb radar as Unidentified-6 for a period of eighteen seconds, on a heading of 193 degrees. All contact after then was lost.'  
_How could she have done such a thing?_ 'X-ray One found near G/E bridge after transponder signal was activated at 12:56. Recovery initiated at 13:47, and aircraft was in SeeD hands by 14:20. No crew or passengers were in X-ray One at time of capture. Subject believed to be heading for Timber. Galbadian authorities not informed. End initial report.' Squall thumbed through the other pages. As well as Rinoa's file and pictures of the hangar, aircraft and landing site, there were security recommendations and proposals for SeeD radar of its own. There was something definitely missing, though.  
"Where is she?" Cid shrugged.  
"We made some discreet inquiries in Timber, and although she was there, no-one saw her leave. The only trains leaving Timber were heading for Balamb, so the chances are she is here. We are in the process of searching Balamb, but if she wanted to hide, it would be hard for us to find her. She had used to be in a resistance cell, and they are especially good at hiding. Terrorism is a very Darwinian existence, after all." _Yeah, the stupid ones get shot first._ It was a rather cold thought from Squall, but very true.  
"If she returns, or is returned, what will happen to her?"  
"I honestly don't know. Criminal proceedings, possibly psychiatric evaluation…"  
"You're going to send her to a pshrink?"  
"It is one possibility. We have not decided yet. She committed a serious crime. This is not stealing a few hot dogs, this is a helicopter we're talking about." Squall angrily hit back.  
"I know very well." There was venom in his voice, and he had to bite back. Cid encourages individualism, but this was serious insubordination. "Look, I know that she's a bit" – he searched for a better phrase, but could not think of one quickly enough – "messed up, but I don't think that she'll like seeing a psychiatrist very much. Maybe I can help her."  
"Squall, you might be able to help her, but try to do it in conjunction with the counsellor, not instead of." Squall shook his head vigorously.  
"Don't you understand? Rinoa ran because she feels separated from everyone else here. Sending her to see the pshrink is not going to help matters one little bit." _I can't believe I'm saying this. I don't think psychiatry is good, because it's stupid, not because it'll alienate her. When did I become qualified to lecture others on feelings?_  
"OK. You've persuaded me. I'm going to leave the matter to your discretion. Do what you think is best. I want to see how you handle this." _Why? Why do you entrust this with me? I don't like responsibility. But it seems that I am destined to have it heaped on me._ Squall nodded his head in resignation at the extra responsibility.  
"I'm eighteen, not eighty. How can you expect someone who has so few experiences to be wise enough to act in a responsible manner?" Cid smiled, and answered Squall truthfully.  
"The very fact that you accept your weaknesses makes you far stronger than your peers. You may be only eighteen physically, but you are wise beyond your years. I trust your decisions because I know that you are wise enough to make the correct ones." _Thanks a lot. That's really made me feel better._ "Go, have fun. It is possible to have fun and have responsibility. It just takes practice." Squall slowly departed, wondering why he was here all over again.

"How's the shoulder?"  
"A lot better now that you've patched it up." Doctor Kadowaki took a few more readings with her equipment.  
"You know, a few months ago, and you wouldn't be like this. You'd have had to have been opened up like a tin can, and it would have taken months for the bone to heal, if it would have ever done. You might not have got back the use of your arm. But thanks to Esthar, well you should be fine in a day or so. The technology sharing agreement – basically, they give us stuff and we thank them – it has really helped me. I can treat your wound without pulling muscle out of the way. There's a tiny prick-mark on the skin where the recombiner went in, and it knitted up the bone well."  
"I'll tell Squall to thank his dad for me. Thanks doc. I'll see you around." Kadowaki stopped him before he left the infirmary, her head shaking from side to side. _These kids are just so impetuous_.  
"You can't just go straight back to work. Take a few days rest. Don't do any strenuous activity for at least a week. The bone might be fine, but your muscles need time to get back into the right condition. Don't jar it, and don't get shot. You'll be as right as rain in a fortnight. I'm taking you off call for a week, then on light duty for the following week." Irvine started to protest, but the doctor cut him off. "Doctor's orders," she said firmly, accepting no dissent. "You bloody kids, you never learn. You can trade a week's inactivity for a month's agony and pain. Your choice." Irvine grumbled, but accepted his fate.  
The door to the infirmary slid apart into the sides, showing a worried Selphie. "Are you okay?" Irvine nodded. "WHOO-HOO" Selphie jumped up and down for a few moments until she noticed Kadowaki's slightly annoyed expression. "What?" she asked meekly.  
"The infirmary is a place for the infirm of body, not the infirm of mind." She delivered the insult with a smile, and then laughed. "I'm only kidding, but really, you shouldn't make all of that noise in here. There are a few people here who don't want to be disturbed. Now go, both of you, before I have to chase the two of you out. You're bad for the other patients." Irvine followed Selphie out, and the two of them went to the dorms to get changed. Irvine didn't think that walking around in a blood-stained shirt was a very good idea, and Selphie thought that she might change as well.  
The two of them met up, and started a slow walk out of Garden, chatting about this and that. They made their way across the plains to the coastline. It was a secluded spot, away from the ubiquitous monsters that inhabited the countryside.  
The moon was high in the sky when they sat down. It was only ten o' clock, but then the evenings had started to draw in. light from the moon drifted down to meet them, glinting off the water. A thousand stars adorned the sky, the occasional one twinkling in the darkness. Irvine turned to face the more beautiful sight, and saw Selphie staring at him too. "What?"  
"Nothing," Selphie replied, a hint of a smile forming on her lips. The reflections off the water danced playfully along her face, highlighting her features then plunging them into darkness once again. "You know, ever since we got here, I've thought of something." _I love you, I love you, I love you._ Irvine cocked his head.  
"What?" She looked straight into his eyes.  
"I…" _love you, I love you._ "It's a wonderful place isn't it?" She stopped for a second. _What happened to 'might love Irvine'? Now I know it was there earlier today. Do I change my mind that fast?_ Did she love him? She couldn't tell. _How am I supposed to be objective? You can't really get more subjective than this._  
Irvine looked back at her with a touch of sadness. _Does she not love me? Surely she would have said something by now._ "Yeah, it is wonderful." _And so are you. I love you, I love the way that you skip around, the way you talk so animatedly, the way you're so happy. When I feel depressed you are the person who always pulls me back. Ever since we were children I have loved you. Now I can do something about it, perhaps._  
"Selphie, I…" _love you. Come on, you big wuss. It's not hard. You can shoot a sniper rifle, destroy great beasts, defeat sorceresses but can't even tell someone you love her?_ "I…" _LOVE YOU. Two more words, Irvine._ "I…can't go on any missions for another two weeks." _I'm pitiful, I can't tell the person I love that I love her._  
"Oh. That's too bad, Irvine." _Does he not love me?_ Selphie looked away, unable to bear the sight of him. _He doesn't love me, he doesn't love me. What do I do?_ Irvine tried not to turn to face Selphie. _Maybe she doesn't love me. What do I do now?_ The two of them sat on the beach watching the moon slowly drift across the night sky, neither one daring to utter a word. In the silence, the two of them regained their composure.  
Irvine watched the ground in front of him intently, waiting for Selphie to say something. As he watched, a single drop of water hit a stone, splattering out into the dirt. In a second the moisture was gone, the ground having soaked up the precious life-giver. Irvine thought at first that he was crying, but another drop hit the ground, instantly seeping through. He slowly tilted his head upwards, a gradual turn to encompass the entire skyline.  
A spot of rain hit his face, falling from dark clouds hanging in the air like Damocles' sword*. Another spot of rain hit his eye, and the cowboy instantly blinked, trying desperately to push the liquid beast out from his eye. A glance at Selphie, and her look of despair told him what he needed to know. "Come on, let's get back to Garden before we're drenched." Selphie nodded her agreement and the two SeeD ran for shelter. The boots of Irvine splashed through puddles, pulling up water from the ground, caking his soles in mud.  
Selphie slipped on the slimy surface and fell forward, smashing into the ground. Irvine spun around, nearly losing his grip on the ground, and ran back to help his friend. The man helped her up, lifting her clean off the ground before gently lowering her. He tried to contain his laughter. Her face was coated with mud except for two white orbs, which blinked with confusion at his bemused expression. "What?" she said, but it came with spluttering as she spat out a lump of mud that had found its way in. She dragged an arm across her mouth, merely smearing the mud across her face and arm. Irvine scooped her up his arms, and continued running, a helpless Selphie dangling in his arms.  
"Pleasure to be of service, ma'am." He would have tipped his hat, had he had a hand free, or were he wearing one. _Damn, must have lost it back there._ The man shrugged, and continued onwards. Lying in his arms, Selphie giggled uncontrollably. _Maybe he does like me._

Her head bowed, Rinoa entered the front gate of Balamb Garden. The receptionist looked at the girl. As usual, he was wearing blue trousers and braces, and sporting a cap, dark red. He touched the communicator button. "Err, Rinoa just walked in." She didn't even notice. _What have I done? I stole a helicopter. That was calculated to make me _more_ able to fit in?_ She stopped in the middle of the hallway. _Can I face them? Can I look at Squall, at the hurt in his eyes, and know I've betrayed his trust?_ A single tear rolled down her cheek.  
_I don't know whether I can face him._ Squall stopped a few feet away. His muscles tensed as he saw his angel falling from grace before his very eyes. He saw the tear rolling down her cheek, making its way towards the floor with tenacity. _So what do I do now?_ thought he, a question which plagued him any time that emotions came to the fore. _Tell her to pull herself together, that she's embarrassing everyone._ then he mentally corrected himself. _No, that is what I would have done, before she…_ The thought couldn't finish itself.  
_Try to comfort her, tell her that she's wanted? But she knows that already, merely saying it won't help. Why do people need to hear things? If they already hold them to be true, then why does it take their public voicing to assuage their fears? I know that she loves me, so hearing her say it is pointless._ An inner thought, a partial realisation scolded him. _But you're not everyone. Some people need to hear things, because believing a thing to be true is not the same as knowing._ Squall stopped his train of thought.  
_If I go to her, what will I say? What words can remove her fears and bring back the Rinoa that we all know? I am a soldier, I kill people for a living. It's my job to stay as detached from feelings as possible. If I were to open up my feelings, then I would be lost. But if I don't then Rinoa is lost. I must try to understand. I will help Rinoa, but risk terrible guilt. The proverbial double-edged sword._ Squall nodded his head in agreement with the decision that the factions of his brain had come to.  
"Rinoa." A word, floated across to the woman he loved. She caught it, and her head gracefully moved up to lock on his eyes. He smiled, and for a second she was trapped. Did she run or stay? She looked around at Garden _Run, run, run._ Her eyes dropped to where Squall stood, his head cocked to the side. _Stay, stay, stay._ She was torn, torn between the man she loved and the life she hated. She could not stand being an outcast, regarded by others as something far removed from themselves. Was she not human, like them? _If you prick me, do I not bleed? Maybe, but then my eyes might flash yellow._ But she was different. There was no escaping that fact, it was self-evident. Sorceresses and other humans can not get along. They despised her, her love was taught to kill her kind, SeeD was engineered, was brought into being just to destroy her. 'Yes, she isn't a threat, but for how long?' they would say. She knew that her sorceress powers were deep inside her, and she would never touch them. But how could anyone else know that she was telling the truth? She saw his smile. _So what do you think, my love? Do you want to help me, or are you a distraction as the dagger plunges into my back? No, Squall would never do that. He is virtuous, he is honourable. He will never betray me like I have betrayed him. I do not deserve a man who is willing to die for me so readily. My life has been a long string of retreats, never fighting, always running. I ran from Caraway, I ran from that fake Deling, and I ran from SeeD. I ran from Squall when we landed in Esthar. It was so much easier to run, to not face up to the emotions that were spinning their web inside me. Am I destined to run for the rest of my life, or can I finally stay?_  
Squall took another step towards her, unsure of what to do. _Slowly now, don't scare the girl_. He took another step. _Closer, but very slowly. I don't know what she will do. Will she run, or will she stay?_ He searched his mind for an answer. _Honestly, I don't know. Maybe…_ he left the thought unfinished on purpose. He didn't know which way he wanted her to go. _If she stayed, then maybe I could talk to her, try to comfort her and help her. If she ran, then I wouldn't have to deal with it._ He blanched at the last thought. _I thought I was past that uncaring nature. But how can I let it go. It was useful, still is. It is my defining factor. Without my coldness I am lost, because I'll have no defence when the walls of emotion close. I need it to protect me. I can't deal with emotions, so I must block them out. But I can't block them out, not forever. Why? Because…_ His eyes settled on Rinoa's countenance, her brown eyes staring straight at him, laying him open for the world to see. _Because of…her_. Another step, another two feet closer to her. She didn't resist, and he felt slightly buoyed by this.  
_I must stay_, she thought. _If I don't, then I'll just keep on running away, I'll never stop, never face that which causes my retreat. No more! Now, I make a stand._ Squall was just a few feet from her now, closing with every step. Another step, only two paces from her. It was hard to resist the urge to run to her, to hold her close to his chest. One more step to go.  
_No, I can't stay, I must leave! It'll be too much._ But it was too late. She was about to turn, to turn and run from the entire affair when Squall reached her and held her in his arms. _Too late, Rinoa_ he thought, sensing that she was about to turn. She cried, tears starting their run down her face. They were never to make it. Squall ripped off a glove, and gently scooped them off her cheeks. "Are you okay?" _How stupid can you get?_  
"No." So meek was the response that Squall longed to take her, to bury her head in his chest and not let go until the evils had gone.  
"Will you be?"  
"I don't know. Maybe." Squall had heard that before. 

Author: Chapter Eight will be around sooner or later. University starts in a few days' time. After then, I don't know just how quickly I'll be able to get these out.

*: For those of you unfamiliar with this phrase, Damocles was a member of the court of Dionysius (king of Syracuse – the original one in Sicily, not New York), and he often mentioned that the king's life was extremely easy. Dionysius invited him for a meal at his house, and while Damocles ate, a sword dangled above him, held up by a single hair. Dionysius was trying to demonstrate how precarious a king's position really is. One history lesson.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	8. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Eight

"One must approach a man gradually and cautiously to know him."  
Fyodor Dostoyevsky   


President Loire studied the maps closely. As far as he could tell, the blue dots were all along the right hand side of the piece of paper, and red dots were across the left side. There were a few white and black dots in the middle. "Yes," he said after what he judged was an acceptable time. "So what do we do now?" Kiros was standing behind him, thinking devilish thoughts.  
"Well, Mr President, it's clear that we must strike at the Galbadians from the south, passing through the third sector." Laguna looked at the mass of dots. There were a lot of dots in that sector. _I thought we were blue, not red._ Then Laguna had a thought, a cynical one.  
"Are you sure?" Kiros smiled, but his friend couldn't see the grin.  
"Now you come to mention it, it probably wouldn't be a good idea. Perhaps through sector five." The general standing in front of Laguna nodded, and Laguna agreed, turning around to shoot a look at his ex-friend. Kiros smiled and shrugged his shoulders. Laguna shook his head and rolled his eyes, turning back to address the general.  
"Is there anything else I should know?" The general shook his head. "In that case, that will be all." The man stood up and retreated out of the room. When he was out of earshot, Laguna whirled around to face Kiros. "Why the hell did you do that?" Kiros burst out laughing, hardly able to stand up.  
"I'm…sorry…couldn't…help it," he managed through the fits of laughter. The soldier-turned-president of a nation regarded the man nearly doubled up before him. Kiros had been with for most of his adult life. Laguna could not imagine life without his closest confidante, partly because he had hardly ever had to. "Laguna," Kiros said, waving a hand in front the president's eyes. "Zoning out on us again? You know, you ought to do something about that. It's becoming a habit."  
"Whatever, I'm going to see if Squall's back yet." Kiros looked at his watch, counting back the hours.  
"It'll only be about eleven o' clock in the morning there. You should be all right."  
"Why can't everyone just use our time? It would be much simpler."  
"Yes, but confusing for them. Besides, everyone else has a right to say the same thing." Laguna was ignoring him, tapping away at the console in front of him.  
"What's the…?" He never got to finish the question.  
"Twelve."  
"Thanks, how did you know?"  
"That you wouldn't be able to remember the international dialling code for Balamb? Just a hunch, I guess." Laguna punched the rest of the buttons in from memory. The SeeD crest appeared on the monitor for a few seconds, and then the face of the operator appeared.  
"To whom would you like to be connected?" It was a sweet feminine voice that gently floated out of the speakers, and it made Laguna smile a little.  
"Commander Leonhart, please. Is he in?"  
"He's definitely returned from his mission, I'll see if he is at his extension." Laguna waited for a few minutes while the operator, and now a few SeeD cadets, tried to chase down where Squall was. They eventually found him in the library. "He will be with you in a few moments." Laguna nodded his thanks. _This call is costing me a fortune._ Eventually the detached head and shoulders of Laguna's long-lost son appeared, his expression completely blank. _Good thing I never play him at poker_.  
"Mr President, if this is about our mission, you should talk to Headmaster Cid." _The opening gambit. He's trying to catch me off-guard, to throw a curve-ball at me. He knows very well what this is about._  
"It isn't about the mission, Squall." Squall's eyes flared a little. If the resolution of the monitor had been better, Laguna would have seen his pupils dilate a little. _That's all the reaction he's going to give. He could be holding Aces and Deuces, and he wouldn't give any reaction._ "It's about us." _I'll raise you._  
"There is no us. There is only you and I." _He calls. Time to change my hand._  
"Why do you not want to talk to me, son?" Squall gave a reaction to that one. _That poker face is cracking, Squall._  
"Don't _ever_ call me that. Why don't I want to talk with you? Even you could work that one out." _Even me? Surely he does not think me that dense? I may already know the reason, but if I hear it, if he admits it, then maybe I can do something about it._  
"I've missed your childhood, Squall. I don't want to miss your adulthood as well."  
"Nice words. Where did you get them from?" _Kiros said it, but there's no way I'm going to admit _that. Laguna looked at the console in defeat. He had him beat. His hand was simply too strong to be beaten.  
"Why are you so cold? Can you not accept at least some emotion? I am your flesh and blood after all." _I know why he's so cold, but I can't do anything about it. Hyne, this is so frustrating. What can I do?_  
"I am cold, am I? If I am so cold, you should leave me alone so you don't freeze to death. Better still, hang around me all you want. I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, you aren't flesh and blood."  
"At some point in time you'll have to accept that you have a father."  
"Are you a betting man?" And the connection was severed. _He had a Full House, and I was left with two pairs._ "I lose." _'As far as I'm concerned, you aren't flesh and blood.' Words can cut deep, Squall. You should remember that, for it is good advice. The worst thing for a father is never to see his son. That is what I thought, but it is beaten by a son rejecting his father. It cuts so very deeply, Squall. I hope for your sake that your child doesn't say the same thing. I would not wish this upon anyone._  
"Penny for your thoughts." Kiros had been sitting quietly in the corner, listening to the altercation with interest. He sensed that he was needed. Laguna had seemed so close to tears. _It is not good to see Laguna like this._ Kiros tried to think of something to say, but for once the right words were hard to find.

Irvine walked up to Squall. _OK, I might as well get this over and done with._ "Squall, have you got a moment?" Squall looked up in irritation from his book, but gestured towards the seat opposite him. Irvine took it, keeping his eyes fixed on Squall's. "I need you ask your advice." _Oh great. Now I get to play advisor to Irvine's problems. Somebody kill me now._ Instead, Squall simply stared at him. _He's pissed at me. This was not a good idea._ It doesn't matter, I'll talk to someone…" Squall cut him off.  
"Speak." The smallest hint of anger was apparent in his voice. _To be interrupted, and then he doesn't want to ask me. Will you just get on with it?_  
"You see, it's about Selphie." Squall rolled his eyes, but Irvine either didn't catch it or didn't care. "I keep trying to tell her that I love her, but I can never find the words."  
"How about 'I love you'? It's worked before." _Please shut up._  
I just can't get the words out. I think them, and then the blood rushes to my head and I end up blurting something, anything out. I thought I'd ask you because you told Rinoa and you might be able to tell me how you did it. If you can do it, well…" He trailed off. Squall looked suddenly very wary, as if he had been caught doing something he was not supposed to. "Squall?"  
"I never actually told Rinoa that I love her." Irvine was taken aback.  
"Why not?" Squall simply stared at him, eyebrows raised. "OK, I take your point. But the two situations are totally different." Another set of raised eyebrows greeted the comment. "Well, they are! You two are already in a relationship. It's not as if it matters. With Selphie it's different. If I tell her…Squall, are you listening?" _Maybe that's it_, Squall thought.  
"What? Oh, I don't think that I can really give you any advice. Why don't you try someone else?" Irvine nodded, but remained seated. "Are you going?"  
"No, I'll stay here. I've got some things that I need to think through." Squall slammed his book shut, the smashing of the pages producing a resounding crash. Stalking out to leave his friend by himself, Squall made his way to the dormitories, where he knew Rinoa would be.  
"Can I come in?" Rinoa answered from inside the room, and Squall stepped over the threshold. "Rinoa, I need to speak with you. It will only take a minute." She turned, slightly concerned at his tone and choice of words. "I don't know if you know this but…but…as we've got a few nights off, I was wondering if you wanted to go out?"  
"Yeah, sure. It sounds like fun. But I've got nothing to wear!" Rinoa dived into her bedroom, slamming shut the door. Squall shouted his goodbyes and trotted out the door, heading for the library. He found Irvine still sitting there, head in his hands. Squall slid into his seat, opening up the book.  
"Hard to say, isn't it?" Irvine asked.  
"Yeah."

_Balamb has a few attractions for people, but I don't think that any of them will be enjoyable._ Squall leant against the railing. Music assaulted his ears from giant speakers hung from huge brackets attached to the wall. Spotlights shone diffuse light across certain places, leaving others in near darkness. He turned to catch a sight of his girlfriend. She stood there, a sight in herself to rival the majesty of all others. She sipped her drink from a glass.  
He took a swig of his lager. _Why am I here? Not for my enjoyment, certainly. It is for Rinoa that I do this, and that is enough. She seems to be enjoying herself._ The music stopped. _That's funny, they normally play continuous mixes._ Another few seconds, then a tune started. All treble for a few seconds, and Squall braced himself. _This will not last, of that I'm sure_.  
BOOM! The first smash of the bass line rocked the railings, and the floor shuddered. Squall forced himself to keep his arms to the sides and not try to plug his ears. _'Death by bad music.' That'd be an interesting cause on the Death Certificate._ The pounding on the speakers didn't stop, sending wave after wave of shocks thumping through his head. The vibrations hit his chest. _I can _feel_ the sound_. Some people were smiling brilliantly on the small dance floor below. _They actually _like_ this?_ He turned to Rinoa, hoping that a sour expression on her face would give him excuse to leave. _She's enjoying it?_  
He returned to staring across the spacious room, balconies snaking around its walls like vines over a house. He thought that he saw a familiar shape – actually two – on the other side of the dance hall, but in the dim light he couldn't make out their faces. He took another swig of lager, but after pressing the bottle to his lips he realised that there was nothing left in it. Rinoa had likewise drained her drink.  
The two sauntered over to the crowded bar, just one of the half-dozen in the hall. They managed to find a spot against the rail of the bar, and waited for their turn. _How does the bartender remember who's next?_ He moved towards them. "Yes?" he shouted, but it hardly made it to them.  
"Same again." He knew that the man wouldn't understand, so he pointed to both the empty glass of Rinoa and to his bottle. The barman seemed to understand. He had been working here for a year and understood the kind of sign language used to indicate what drinks were wanted. It usually consisted of shouting one word and holding up a number of fingers. He opened up the refrigerator behind him and extracted Squall's lager. He then mixed Rinoa's drink, placing the two in front of the couple. Squall handed him a note, and the barmen exchanged it for a couple of coins. _This is three times as expensive as in a bar_. But then this was not a bar, he thought.  
Squall started to walk towards the two figures that he recognised, Rinoa in tow. He made it across the room, occasionally taking a gulp of lager from the brown-tinted bottle he clasped tightly. He picked his way through the mass of bodies, hitting a man there or nudging a woman there. A man smashed into him from the side, barrelling into his side like a cannonball. Squall recovered quickly and looked towards the man on the floor. Just over six feet tall when standing, even when sitting the man seemed to exude an aura of power. Roughly dressed in a blue shirt hanging loosely from his frame and a pair of black trousers, dusted from his trip along the floor, the man sat uncomfortably on the hard floor. An old pair of shoes hung from rather than fitted his feet. The smash of glass accompanied the man's fall, and pale brown liquid slowly drifted along the floor, pooling in areas as it made its way down the slight slope of the gangway.  
The man had clearly enjoyed a few too many drinks, testimony to which was shown when he attempted to ascend to his feet. His legs, ungainly in their length and girth were not suited to a delicate operation of lifting the hulk of a man influenced by drink. On the third attempt he succeeded, wavering a little as the thick trunks almost lost a footing on the slippery floor beneath him. His eyes tried to focus, brown irises drifting backwards and forwards in a vain attempt at seeing that which was in front of him. Squall took his leave before the man could regain his senses, striding off into the depths of the hall. Rinoa hurried behind him to keep up.  
He made it to the other side without further incident. Rinoa saw why Squall was walking there when she recognised Selphie and Irvine. She was hugging a railing, with Irvine desperately trying to look impressive. _Maybe they could help me with Rinoa_, he had thought, heading towards them in an attempt to illicit their support. _Rinoa has trouble fitting in, maybe the best course of action is to include her in the entire group as often as possible._ He had not asked Rinoa what had happened while she was away, partly because he did not want to know. The other part was that he thought it might not go her much good, dredging up memories – albeit recent ones – about something that she no doubt wanted to forget. He had heard what had happened to Timber, and how it must have hurt Rinoa deeply. He two friends from the Forest Owls were dead, leaving only her SeeD friends, and he knew how she thought about that.  
"How are you?" he shouted at the top of his voice. He could see Selphie look up at him without comprehension. "Let's go somewhere to talk." He motioned towards a room away from the hall. "TALK." They nodded, and the four of them managed to fight their way through the crowd. They emptied into a side room, Irvine and Squall both fiddling with their ears. "So, where's Zell and Quistis?"  
"Zell's off with his girlfriend" – she attached a lot of accent onto the last word – "and Quistis is getting some drinks. Actually, I'd better go and tell her." Selphie ran off into the throng, her small form quickly becoming lost to the other three. Irvine stood there impassively. None of them had anything they really wanted to talk about now that they were here, so each waited for Selphie to return with Quistis. She was not long, dragging behind a bemused Quistis. "We're back!"  
"The drinks sure are expensive," Quistis muttered. "I could have bought a small car with the money from the last round." She handed the drinks to her two companions. Squall took a swig of his half-empty drink, setting it down on a round table, about elbow height. _Perfect for leaning_, Squall thought, taking advantage of its design. Irvine was taller, and so when he tried it, it looked as though he was doing stretching exercises. Selphie nearly spat out her drink, trying desperately to swallow the drink before it escaped. She barely succeeded before the urge to giggle overtook her, and she burst out laughing. This upset the now upright Irvine, who merely stood there with a foul expression on his face.  
"Why don't we go somewhere where we don't have to blow a week's wages on a round?" It was a powerful argument, Squall thought, and he agreed. Irvine and Selphie nodded their assent, Rinoa not really paying attention.  
"Come on Rinoa," Squall said, holding her hand gently. "We're going somewhere else." The five teenagers made their way through to the exit, passing the entry booths. They walked past the two bouncers on the door who were busy checking a couple for hidden weapons. _I think they would have found my gunblade,_ Squall thought idly. They walked down the streets, heels and shoes clacking on the stone roads. The night sky shone with the light of the moon and the litter of stars cast over the blanket of the night like gold dust. A few stars twinkled here and there. The wind whipped at their hands and faces, pulling off the thin blankets of warm air that covered them. Rinoa shivered a little in the cold air. They ducked into a doorway, and it was only after they had entered that Rinoa recognised the bar as that of last night.  
_Is he here? I don't know whether to hope so or not. I kind of don't want him to see me, because it would be rather embarrassing, but I want to see him, to show him that I have made progress._ The five teens sauntered over to a long table in a corner, Squall taking a chair and Quistis perching herself on the padded seat that ran around the edges of the room. Selphie worked her way along the seat until she sat next to Quistis, and Irvine closed in behind her. "I'll go and get the drinks. What do you want?" The four SeeD told Rinoa and she picked her way to the bar. Sitting there was the same man who had talked to her yesterday, but without a drink in his hand. There was no other room along the bar, so Rinoa walked up next to him.  
"Good evening. I see you have brought your compatriots." He hadn't turned around to look, and Rinoa wondered how he knew. He studied her reaction intensely, but not obviously so. _Wonder how I know they're here? I notice much, little girl._ "Do you have a lot of money?" She nodded.  
"I have plenty, no thanks to the last place we were in." The man raised his eyebrows. "They charged a horrendous amount for drinks." He nodded, understanding where they had just been.  
"I can't get in there. They won't permit my weapons, and I will not be parted from them. I have dangerous enemies." Rinoa turned to face the man for the first time. She didn't notice the bartender waiting. Her acquaintance pointed at the barkeeper and Rinoa composed herself.  
"Can I have two pints of lager, two white wines and a gin and tonic, please." He nodded and walked off. She turned to face the other man, who had acquired a drink from somewhere. "Your weapons?" The man nodded soberly. "What weapons do you have?" The man cocked his head, deciding what to tell her.  
He slowly brushed back his jacket to reveal a hip holster, complete with high-powered automatic pistol. "There is another against my back, with a silencer on it." He bent down and rolled up his right trouser leg, revealing a medium-sized knife strapped to his leg with black Velcro. "I also have about half a dozen throwing knives in my jacket pocket. Satisfied?" Rinoa had her eyes wide open in shock at the serious weaponry he was carrying. _Who_ is _he? Who has to carry that sort of power at all times?_ The bartender returned with her drinks on a tray, and she paid the man, glad for a reason to depart before she said something stupid.  
"Goodbye, Miss Heartilly." She walked off slowly, not wishing to seem as though she was fleeing. She reached her friends, clasping the tray hard enough to make the knuckles turn white. She set the tray down, handing out the drinks. Squall took his pint and sipped at it, smacking his lips as the first taste of the liquid reached his throat.  
"You big wuss, Squall. " Irvine tipped the glass towards his mouth, letting the lager flow into his mouth. He swallowed with his mouth open, draining the glass quickly. He set it down on the table half of a minute later, the froth gently rolling down the inside of the glass. There was a minuscule pool of pale brown collecting in the bottom of the glass. Squall grunted, and proceeded to drain his glass. He set it down next to Irvine's empty glass, a testament to Squall's revived feelings of rivalry. Quistis shook her head in disbelief at Squall's immaturity, but Selphie giggled and egged the pair on. Rinoa smiled slightly, a feeling of comradeship finally returning to her heart.

"Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink," the four girls chanted, as Squall, Irvine and Zell drank down their pints. Zell was first to drop his glass to the table followed quickly by Squall and Irvine, to huge cheers from the girls. Zell wiped some stray lager from his mouth, and Squall leant back against the chair. Zell and Inthea had appeared, completely oblivious to the fact that the other five were already there. Zell had quickly entered the games, and Inthea showed a fair bit of enthusiasm. As Irvine was last, he had to take penance. First he received a pint of lager and drank about a third of it. Then each of the girls poured in some of their drinks, making a lethal cocktail of lager, wine, vodka and gin.  
"Go on, down it in one. Or are you a big wuss?" Squall taunted, and Irvine tipped back his head, pouring the concoction into his mouth. He brought his head down level quickly, perhaps too quickly because his head spun horrifically. "You've had too much, Irvine. Maybe you should stick to tonic water." Squall managed through a fit of laughter. If any of them were sober enough to notice Squall's transformation they would have been amazed. But then alcohol does lower inhibitions.  
"I am NOT drunk, Squall." Irvine stated, quite clearly in his mind. The others laughed at his pitiful attempt at speaking, and Irvine got even angrier, but then he gave up, seeing futility through the haze. The barman delivered another round of drinks. Seeing the seven of them slowly draining his bar dry made him hark back to his earlier days, drunk every night. _They were fun days_.  
Rinoa noticed the man she had met at the bar had walked up behind the barman, using him as partial cover. _I wonder what he wants_. The girls were not nearly as far gone as the guys, mainly because they were not seeing who was the fastest at downing drinks. "Miss Heartilly," he stated, quite lucid in his speech. _He's been having more than them, how is he doing that?_ "Miss Trepe, I presume." Quistis turned to address the man who had mentioned her name. _He looks kind of familiar._ A few seconds later she remembered who he looked like. "What has it been, four years?" She nodded.  
"And it's Instructor Trepe now." He smiled warmly.  
"Following in my footsteps, yes? Well, are you not going to introduce me to your friends?"  
"Of course. This is the Omega." 

Author: The conversation between Laguna and Squall (really Laguna's thoughts) might be a little confusing if you don't know the rules to poker. If you don't then I can't really help you short of explaining the rules here. I don't think that FanFiction.net was created with this purpose in mind :-) 

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	9. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
All characters are copyright of Squaresoft except the Omega and the extras.

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter Nine

"The are no compacts between lions and men, and wolves and lambs have no concord."  
Homer   


Irvine looked slightly puzzled, and faced Selphie, who had the same expression. Zell and Squall vaguely recognised the name. Rinoa looked at the man she had known for a few days. "Chystall?" Inthea looked over at Rinoa questioningly.  
"Kissed all? What do you mean?" Rinoa ignored the question. She was too busy searching the Omega's eyes for an answer. He noticed her staring, but was far too experienced to give anything away. His eyes were totally impassive, letting no emotion escape.  
"I have met Rinoa before. I told her my name was Chystall, because I did not think that telling someone from Balamb Garden that the Omega is sitting in this pub was going to help me. Now that Miss Trepe has recognised me though, I suppose that I might as well inform you of my identity.  
"Yes, I am the person referred to in the SeeD database as 'Omega, The'. I passed the examination when I was fifteen, about ten years ago. I served as a SeeD for seven years, rising through the ranks until I was Commander of SeeD, a post I held for four years. During this time, I engaged in numerous – how shall I say? – less than legal operations for persons undisclosed. It was during one of those missions that I disappeared. There, as far as SeeD are concerned, the story ends. Yet here I am. So, you might well ask, how did I get here? I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you." The Omega gave a grin, showing a row of sparkling white teeth.  
Squall was trying to think straight, but the molecules of alcohol kept derailing any thoughts that tried to run through his brain. "An ex-SeeD," Selphie exclaimed. "BOOYAKA. Tell us what you did when you were a SeeD Sir Omega." Selphie thought that this man who had appeared out of nowhere was quite cool, and wanted to hear all about him. Irvine started to protest but all that seemed to come out was incoherent gibberish. Squall said nothing, along with Rinoa and Inthea. _I wonder why he's here_, Quistis thought. _It might be interesting to find out_. She nodded, and the Omega quickly grabbed a stool and sat down. He looked over the empty glasses in front of the three guys.  
"I take it you're having drinking games. I think the entire city knows that by now. Anyway, you don't use lager." The three guys looked at the newcomer suspiciously. "Here, I'll get some for you. Then we can start proper drinking. Barman! Vodka, neat, fifths, eight of them please!" The SeeDs looked at each other, Squall and Zell with dread on their faces. _Neat vodka, a _fifth_ of it. Is he mad?_ Irvine didn't seem to even register that someone had spoken. _Poor guy, if you lose you have to drink an extra pint, and he's lost three straight now._ The barman wove his way through the tables, eagerly anticipate the small fortune this would cost the man. The Omega handed him a one thousand Gil note. "Keep the change." The barman opened his eyes in shock, the drinks were barely worth half of the money the Omega had given him. The Omega set out the drinks, two glasses in front of each man.  
"Now what you do is this." He demonstrated, holding a glass in each hand. He tipped his head back, opened his mouth, and poured in both glasses at once, nearly choking as the strong alcohol seared his throat. He dropped his head, and stared at the three men who had to follow that act. Several other conversations in the bar had died down whilst the Omega had done that particular feat, so impressive that it was.  
"No way, you are not going to get me to do that," Squall stated adamantly. He pushed the two small glasses of liquid away from him. Wafts of alcohol slowly rose from the surface of the vodka, attacking his sense of smell. Through the acrid fumes Squall tried to focus on the man now sat in front of him. He seemed to be studying Squall. _This man appears here, he befriends Rinoa, knows Quistis, this seems a bit of a coincidence. But what can I do? I don't even know who he is._ "Listen, do you have another name than The Omega? It seems a little strange for a name." The Omega smiled thinly and nodded, and waited a few seconds before answering.  
"Yes, I do have a real name. I stopped using it when I became a SeeD. People know it, people like Cid, but it was removed from the computer archives at my insistence. I am known as the Omega everywhere now. Since graduation I have not told anyone my name, and I shall not start now. Anyway, unless the rules on curfew have been relaxed since I left you are all in for trouble when you get back."  
"It's all right, Omega." Quistis smiled at the newcomer. "Cid gave us permission because of our successful mission." A flash of recognition fell across the Omega's face.  
"Ah yes, the communications tower in Galbadia, how did it go?" Squall snapped his head round to face the Omega, the vertebrae down his spine protesting at the jarring movement.  
"How do you know about that?" The Omega shrugged, not allaying Squall's fears even slightly.  
"I know lots of things. I left SeeD but my contacts throughout the world remain. It is easy to find out what is happening. I met Rinoa, who said that you had all gone off somewhere. A few well-placed calls later and I knew that you were trying to eliminate a communications relay station in Galbadia. I didn't want to push my luck so I stopped there, though I probably could have obtained much more detailed information than that, probably down to how much you were paid to do it. But no doubt you don't want to talk about that, you have to hold onto the shred of mystery you still have."  
"Who are you?" Irvine raised his head slowly, rolling it in the direction of the ex-SeeD. Squall buried his face in his hands, and the Omega laughed. Still reeling from his stupor, Irvine didn't notice as Zell and Selphie bodily shifted him out of the seat. Throwing an arm around Irvine's waist, Selphie turned around and faced her friends.  
"He's had a little too much, I'll get a taxi back to Garden. See ya!" Selphie struggled towards the door, dragging Irvine along by his waist. He seemed to wake up and move under his own impetus for a while, making Selphie's job more that of a navigator. As the two forms disappeared out of the door, the six heads turned back to the table around which they seated.  
"Did you say you were Commander of Garden for four years? Squall's only been a commander for a few months and he already hates it." Quistis was intrigued by this man. Whether it was his previous occupation as the most experienced SeeD in Garden or the fact that it was someone who she had once seen, his sword flashing across the T-Rexaur's neck, she did not know.  
"It was all right when I was commander. It was really a theoretical title, simply a reward for my service. I lead any missions that I was in, but there was no paperwork and I didn't do anything different to other SeeDs. They just paid me more." _There's the flash of a smile again, he uses it very well. I wonder what he's doing now_. Squall grunted. _They didn't pay me any more_. It was getting late, and he had to get up tomorrow morning. Unlike the past commander, Squall had paperwork, and it was not going to go away. _I suppose I should get back to Garden._ Squall made his excuses and got up, slowly walking towards the door. Rinoa ran to catch him up.  
"What's wrong with you, Squall?" _I don't know, perhaps that seeing that man brought up something, a feeling that I had forgotten. He had only been gone three years. Already people had forgotten him, the legend a memory as other legends take his place. Were I to die right now, how long would it be before I was forgotten? A year, maybe two? Is the legacy that I leave merely that of a distant memory, like that of the Omega? How could I explain this to anyone, the feeling that my entire life is for nought? You are born, you live, you die. What good was your life if no-one can remember it? But I suppose that is very cynical, just because nobody remembers, that doesn't mean that you were any less important that anyone else. But much as I try, I cannot believe that. When I die, I want to be more than just a dull memory, occasionally surfacing for a few seconds in someone's mind, a footnote in History._  
"Nothing, I've just got to get up early tomorrow, that's all." Rinoa looked at her boyfriend sceptically but didn't pursue it. Zell and Inthea were next to go because like Squall, Inthea had things to do, in her case an early shift at the library. Much as she wanted to forget Dewey codes, she knew that part of her life was the library, and she was very conscientious about it. Zell tagged along, not really wanting to stay behind with Quistis and the Omega.  
"So, why did you become an instructor?"  
"I guess it was a natural step. I had benefited from the years of teaching I had received, and I thought that it was a good way of returning the favour. I really wanted to make a difference in someone's life, to help influence people to make something of their lives. Teaching is a noble calling, as well as an essential one. I feel it is very beneficial to SeeD, that I am changing people's lives and helping to mould their destinies. It doesn't sound very satisfying."  
"No, it does. Even though I only taught every so often, the sense that I was doing some good was very real. It is an indescribable feeling of worth." _Maybe he understands me more than my friends. None of them have ever taught, ever experienced that. I can relate to this man very well_.  
"So, what is your real name? I know you don't want to tell anyone, but you can tell me. We've known each other for years, after all," she said with a smirk. He openly laughed at that comment, then sighed, a contemplative sigh.  
"Maybe. I feel like I can trust you, that you are a very honest and noble person, as well as very attractive." _Is he trying to come on to me?_ "Very well. My name is Belial Lazarus. If you don't know your ancient history then the name Belial will mean nothing to you, but he was a very bad man. He was the closest thing to pure evil in the history of our planet. He lived long ago, before accurate records were kept. It is said that the adamantine gates of Hell spewed forth demonic creatures from the depths of the underworld. The legions of the undead were lead by Belial, a warrior who gave his soul to Beelzebub in exchange for immortality. The forces of Hyne defeated Belial's army of the damned, and Belial is held in the kingdom of Heaven for all eternity. All this of course may well be false, just mythology. How would we know, though?"  
"I suppose that if you shared your name with the leader of Hell's army you probably would want to change it. But it's not that bad." Belial raised his eyebrows high into his forehead. "Well okay, there's not many worse names, but nobody judges you on your name alone. I don't think any worse of you, and for some reason I think it shows a kind of vulnerability in you, that you worry about what other people think of you."  
"Doing what I did – killing people – it was very hard to open up the emotions because you get sucked in. Of course, if you block out the emotions you end up detached, the only hope you have is that you don't reach the end of the Curve and drop off."  
"The Curve? I've never heard of it." _But I suppose he was telling the truth about emotions. If you let it get to you, you'll kill yourself from the guilt. It'll eat and gnaw at you until you feel that you have to die to make it up to the people you killed, a kind of penance for crimes committed._  
"It's called the Wambaugh Curve. If you go far enough along it you start to think that suicide's a good idea, a way out of life. Killers get it a lot, some kind of divine retribution for the atrocities we commit on this world, a way of punishing us before we reach the other realm."  
"How far along it are you?" She asked the question almost without thinking, waiting to hear what his reply would be.  
"Not far enough to not appreciate good drink and good company. Tell me: why are you still here? Your friends left yet you remain. Surely the ramblings of an old man do not mean that much to you." The pair laughed for a few seconds. _How long has it been? I can't remember._ Quistis looked at her drink, held gently in her hand. _Maybe it's this stuff's fault. What the hell, he's kind of cute and no doubt very experienced._ She felt his piercing blue eyes studying her face.  
_What are you thinking, Instructor Trepe? Maybe…that would be too much to hope for, yet the signs are there – slight coloration of the cheeks, dilation of the pupils, the body language. Time for the acid test*._ He looked deep into her eyes, knowing that if she responded uncomfortably, she probably was not thinking what he believed she was. She stared back, her blue orbs fixed upon his. _Thank you for your answer, Miss Trepe._  
He sloshed his drink around the bottom of the glass for a few seconds, watching as the liquid whirled around the glass, rising up around the edges, a miniature whirlpool. _A miniature whirlpool, albeit artificially sustained. Were I to stop the endless moving around, then this wonder would die completely soundlessly, not attracting the slightest bit of attention. God I hate lateral thought. Sometimes you cannot escape it, you draw parallels between something like a whirlpool and my life. It encroaches even when I'm trying to achieve something so base that it could have come straight from a caveman. Go the fuck away!_  
"It is getting rather late, do you have anywhere to stay?" She shook her head, a little too despondently Belial thought to himself. _Keep up appearances, Miss Trepe._ "I can see if there are any rooms in the hotel. Don't worry, I'll pay for it." She forced herself to look happier. _Maybe he doesn't want to, maybe he was only saying I look attractive for conversation, maybe he's got a girlfriend. He's right, though – it's too late to go back to Garden now. Maybe if I try a little I can get my message across_.  
"You know, I haven't seen you in four years, and even then we didn't know each other. We have so much to talk about." _Obviously you've never heard of subtlety, Quistis. Maybe I should leave her as a kind of joke. No, I've got a libido to satisfy as well, even if I have managed to reduce it to almost zero. Relationships are dangerous – they give people a route into your inner feelings. Quite often they are too stupid to use this route, but you shouldn't really take the chance._  
"We could go to my hotel room to talk, it is much quieter than this place. Then we might sort you out some place to stay." _Were I a teenager I probably would be inwardly shouting for joy, but I am not a teenager. I never really was. Time passed for me, and I matured in my abilities but my attitude towards people and existence never changed: people are not to be engaged in idle conversation, it makes for false friendships and misplaced trust. Towards existence I have always remained very philosophical, I never expected to live much longer than the moment, always planned for my continued existence, but never anticipated that it would happen._  
"That sounds like a very good idea, Belial." The two got up and headed towards the door. Belial pulled the door and held it for Quistis to step through, taking up station behind her. He sidled next to her, walking slowly in the moonlit night towards his hotel.

"Why are they attacking us? That is what I don't understand. We are starting to really punish them yet still they keep coming. How many must we kill before Galbadia understands that we will not die?" Laguna shook his head in frustration. "This Dulche man must be mad if he thinks he can beat us. They may have a larger army and we may have spent more time researching in medicine and starting social programmes but we still have a better army than them. Why are they doing this?"  
"Lebensraum?" Laguna looked at Kiros questioningly. "Never heard of it? I hadn't until I heard Odine talking about it. He called the need for Galbadia to expand it 'searching for its Lebensraum'. I think it means something like 'living space' in his language. A country becomes packed in, and needs to expand its borders to accommodate more territory for its burgeoning population and for the minerals, like our large oil field under the permafrost."  
"Is that all they want? Why can't we just give them the oil?" The starting of a dull throb began in the front of his skull, threatening to envelop his entire brain in pain. This happened every time he discussed politics.  
"If we gave Galbadia oil, it would look as if we were appeasing them. Before you ask why we can't do that, I'll tell you. If we do, then Galbadia could ask for anything again and we would be almost obligated to give it to them. Also, our reputation would be damaged, we would be seen to be caving in to Galbadian pressure. What we can do is destroy their country and then rebuild it. We then are seen as benevolent to our enemies and forgiving, not unpleasant qualities."  
"So you think we should kill a load more Galbadians and then help them?" Laguna was trying to understand this logic, but it eluded him.  
"Such is the nature of politics. It is not very helpful saying this but you have to become a little detached when you have command. This sounds very callous but you cannot dwell on each and every life that is lost. You want to, so do I, but if we do we lose objectivity and that is a very bad thing to be without."  
"But these people are losing their lives! We call and they fight and die for their country. There are hundreds of families without a father or a son right now because of this war. I don't want what happened to Squall and Raine to happen to anyone else. But I can't stop it, can I?"  
"Well, Laguna, there is one way. The generals came up with it the other week but were afraid to come forward with it because it is as they say 'very cowardly'. They want wars to be fought in the ground and in the air by soldiers carrying guns, not this way. But they showed me and it would probably work."  
"If I can find a way of ending this war before both sides' armies are wrapped in black plastic I'll do it. What is the plan?"

Author: Before any fans of _Diablo_ start shouting that I've stolen one of the Lords from that game, let me explain who Belial really is. Quote, 2 Corinthians 6:15 – "What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?" (New International Version). I'm not a Christian, I have very different views on the Universe, mainly that of a scientific viewpoint. No-one has ever debated them with me, which means that no-one knows what I believe in. It would take too long to explain here.  
If you've ever read _Dune_ by Frank Herbert, you'll understand what I mean when I say that the Omega is a little like a Mentat. If you've never read _Dune_, ignore that, it's not very important. I put a little of myself into the character. It is the logical part, the part that looks at life through a purely rational porthole. However, I have never killed someone for money, like he has. He was a SeeD after all, and that's what they do. No-one want to see their favourite character as just that? Sorry, but the truth hurts.  
I notice how no-one is criticising me recently. Go on, I like reading them. They're quite funny a lot of the time. I'm not some kind of masochist but it is always interesting to read what people think. Even if it's only a vague 'read it, it was rubbish' or 'read it liked it' one-line thing. I get a number of hits in the statistics section of my author page, not the number of people who read it down to the bottom. Some people just click on it, read a few lines and move on in disgust. (I know, even I do it sometimes, I know I shouldn't). Something fascinates me: more people have read one of my later chapters than one of my earlier ones. I don't know how this works, so any insight into this phenomenon would be much appreciated.

*: I am unaware of whether this phrase is used in America so I shall explain it here. It means to test for a conclusion you believe to be true. It comes from medieval times, when iron pyrite could fool people into thinking it was gold (hence Fools' Gold – in 1576 Martin Frobisher returned to England with a full cargo hold of iron pyrites). To differentiate between the two, nitric acid was poured on the coin in question. Gold would stand up to the acid test, whereas iron pyrite would dissolve. I'm a veritable treasure vault of information aren't I? :-)

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



	10. Default Chapter Title

Forward  
Welcome to the next thrilling (sic) instalment of my story. The prologue has been updated, although the changes are only footnotes and aesthetics. I was going to insert a character with rather colourful language. However, I believe that his character would be more poignant if he did not swear. Once again, All characters (for the time being – my character is not long coming) are property of Squaresoft

# 

Double-Edged

### Chapter One

"History admires the wise, but it elevates the brave"  
Edmund Morris   


Laguna Loire shied away from all matters military. He had fought as a Galbadian soldier, yes, but that was only so that he could travel the world. Once his tour of duty was over, and it ended rather abruptly like the cliff off which he fell, he was going to become a journalist.  
The military was a means to an end for the young Laguna, back when he had no commitments other than to the blue uniform of Galbadia. Then he met Raine. It was, of course, rather fortunate that he met Raine, because she saved his life. But it had stolen his dream. His relationship with the little girl, Ellone, blossomed until he found it harder and harder to leave each morning to fight the dreaded monsters that plagued Winhill.  
After his rather unusual courtship of Raine, the three would have had a wonderful life, were it not for the Sorceress Adel. As the President of Esthar sat in his leather swivel chair listening to the reports of Galbadian incursions, he thought back to the last days in Winhill.

He could almost hear the little girl's soft voice as she cowered in the corner of the room. "Uncle Laguna…" But he wasn't there for her, wasn't there when she needed him the most. The one time in her life that _he_ could make a difference, that _he_ could truly help the girl, and he wasn't there. He was in the fields surrounding the quiet little town, fighting off Caterchipillar with Kiros.  
"You getting tired in your old age, Laguna?" asked his friend. The ex-soldier turned guard shook his head vigorously, whilst resting his palms against his knees. "It's all…in your…imagination," he managed to say in between the gulps of Winhill air his body was craving. His friend merely laughed and sat on a nearby rock.  
"I'll wait for you to get your breath back, shall I?" The future president scowled at him, but secretly thanked his very good friend. Ever since they were in the same company together, Laguna Kiros and Ward had been the best of friends. They were together that day when the three of them all jumped off the cliff in Centra. _Well_, thought Laguna, _I jumped off the cliff. Kiros and Ward didn't have much say in the matter_.  
"I didn't know I was so out of shape. I suppose six months lying down can atrophy the muscles." Kiros looked over at his companion in astonishment. _Where did he get the word 'atrophy' from?_ "You know Kiros, I'm starting to like it here."  
"It's a good thing, Laguna. I don't think that Mrs Loire would like it if you decided that you no longer wanted to be here." Laguna chuckled, but stopped when he thought about what Kiros had said. His dream, to write, to travel, to see the world. It was an immature dream, sure, but it was _his_ dream. Was he willing to throw away his dream to stay here with the woman he loved?  
"It's too late for that," he said aloud. Kiros looked up at him, a questioning look filling his face. "I was thinking. I wanted to be a journalist, but now I have a wife, and a young girl to worry about. Much as I want to leave, to travel, to see the world, I know that I cannot. Love…" he faltered for a moment. "Love is like an anchor on the soul. It pulls you, no matter how much you try to leave, you can never do so."  
Kiros sighed, and then opened his mouth to speak. "I prefer to think of it as a magnet. It doesn't look out of the ordinary, to anyone who examines it, and to people on the outside it is sometimes a mystery. But the attraction that is love can never be understood with words, it has to be felt. And it cannot be broken, not by anything, even death."  
Laguna nodded. "I think I prefer your definition as well. A part of me wants to explore, to stretch my boundaries, but I know that however long I stay here, there will be an overwhelming sense of contentment, that life is worth living."  
"This is getting depressing. Here you are, finally getting your life together, and look at me. You and Ward are my comrades, and that is something that can never be broken. But I still yearn for love, regardless of how I like this place. I can see how you fell in love with Winhill, and how you fell in love with Raine.  
"Despite the great wars and conflicts that occur throughout the world, that ravage it and destroy good men's lives, Winhill feels like a constant. It is something that will never change, it is almost eternal in its peace and tranquillity. Had I nowhere else to go, and I don't, I would like to stay here, even if it means sacrificing my chance of love."  
"Hey, this is getting heavy. Let's go home and we can get something to eat." Kiros nodded, and together they walked the half a mile back to the pub. The cobbled stones hurt the soles of Kiros' feet as he walked, but he didn't mind. Somehow, and despite the fact that he was born somewhere else, this felt like home.  
As the two men walked into the pub, nothing felt wholly wrong. "Raine?" called Laguna, suspicious that she had left the door open but was not downstairs. Silence. "Raine?" he said, a little louder this time. _It could be that she's out_, thought Laguna, but then as he turned to talk to Kiros he noticed the form of a woman behind the bar.  
"RAINE!" he yelled as he ran to her. Laguna picked up his wife and cradled her in his arms, the blood that flowed freely from her head gushing onto his shirt as he wept.  
"Put her down and let me take a look." Laguna complied with his friend's request, and Kiros knelt down. Ten seconds later he pulled back from the bloodied form, a look of relief on her face. "She's still breathing. Go and get the doctor." Laguna nodded and ran out of the door to the pub. Kiros leant over the woman, brushing the hair out of the gash that ran down her cheek.  
"It's all right," he whispered, "Laguna may not know a map from a Malboro but he's a good man. You'll be just fine." Kiros gazed at the woman his friend loved and thought, for just a second, that she smiled.

"As you can see, Mr President, the losses were substantial. Foxtrot Wing was almost completely destroyed, firstly by the engagements in the air, and then by the bombing runs on the ground." But the president was not really listening to anything that was said. Laguna missed his 'quiet time', when he could be alone with only nature.

The doctor rushed in with a brown leather briefcase. He was a rather unkempt man, medium height with brown hair that fell about his head, rather than having any style, and a greying beard that wasn't really combed as often as it should have been. The clothes he wore were dull, but functional. Brown trousers and shoes, with what Laguna guessed as brown socks underneath started what a grey jacket finished. Not terribly fashion-conscious when he was twenty, the middle-aged man, who was puffing from his hundred-yard gallop, had not changed his style (or lack of) in his entire adult life.  
The man knelt beside Raine, and began a survey of her injuries. Blood was slowly seeping through her jacket and the doctor took it off to see where it was coming from. The blood was a great circle on her tee shirt, which the man pulled up to expose the wound. "She seems to only have mild wounds, the gash to her cheek and surface cut here on her side would not cause her to be unconscious. She probably hit her head on the bar as she fell," he said, noting a few specks of blood on the polished wood." He fished in his briefcase for some supplies and started to work. "I'll go for the head wound first. The others are little to worry about. Whoever did this, he did it deliberately." Laguna looked at Kiros, and he looked back. The terror spread to both faces at once, and they cried in unison, "Ellone!"

"Mr President, we would like your authorisation to move the fifth and ninth squadrons from their base at Leuchars* north to plug the gap left by Foxtrot Wing." Kiros tapped the president.  
"What? Oh yes, OK. Very good." The Chief of the Air Staff narrowed his eyes slightly, but said nothing. Laguna smiled, something that he found very hard to do, having just been deep in thought about his old life. Kiros looked at the air chief marshal and nodded. The silent conversation was picked up by the ex-pilot, who wrapped up the meeting as quickly as possible. Gathering his things, he headed for the door.  
"So," started Kiros, "what's on your mind? Don't you dare say 'nothing'. You were so far gone then you would have met yourself coming back." Laguna looked at the man he had been friends with for two-and-a-half decades. He would have laughed at what Kiros had said, were he not feeling so morose.  
"I don't know why, but recently I've been…distracted. I keep thinking of Winhill, of the time that I spent with Raine. That year was the happiest of my life. The eighteen years that I have spent here have been good, but I haven't felt the same kind of happiness that I felt when I looked through the windows of that pub and saw Raine behind the bar, and little Ellone sitting there on the floor." Laguna turned away from his friend, afraid that he was going to cry.  
"I feel so guilty about leaving Squall behind. I didn't even know she was pregnant. That's no excuse, I shouldn't have gone gallivanting off leaving her behind to fend for herself. But what could I do? Whichever direction I take, I lose. Do I stay with Raine, and lose Ellone, or do I go after Ellone, and leave Raine behind?"  
"You had a really tough decision and I believe that you chose the right option in the end. You couldn't have known that Raine was going to die, but you knew that you were never going to see Ellone again if you didn't go after her. It was a double-edged sword, the decision you took. You regained Ellone, but lost Raine. The hard part is accepting that there was no way to save them both. You did what you thought was right, and I would agree that it was. Hell, I did agree at the time. I know that it's never easy to move on with your life. It still gnaws at your soul, that it is somehow your fault that she is gone. But you have to realise that it is not your fault, that even if you were there, Raine would still have died. She died in childbirth, Laguna. There was nothing you or anyone else could have done about it."  
"I know what you're saying is right, and I think that she would not have wanted me to remember her like this, but it's hard. It's so hard." Laguna stopped talking. He had nothing left to say. Kiros waited for him to look back up before leaving. "You can go Kiros, I'm fine now." But he knew that he wasn't, not deep down. Deep down, the gnawing continued unabated.

Quistis Trepe started to unpack her things from the desk. _What was it today?_ she thought. Then she remembered. Today she was supposed to talk about Limit Breaks with a group of twelve-year olds. One by one they filed into the room, taking their positions at their designated seats. _So like robots already_, the instructor thought. _When they grow into SeeDs_, she thought, mentally chuckling at the statement, _will they act like Squall did, simply going through the motions_.  
"Today we are going to talk about Limit Breaks. Now, there are literally hundreds of Limit Breaks. However, the vast majority of these will not suit you. It will come naturally to you when you continue your training which Limit Break you are suited to, but it is still a conscious decision on your part. You will not have to worry about this for another twelve months or so, but you should start thinking about it. By now, all of you have chosen you specialist weapon, and this will remove certain Limit Breaks. You can't do Renzokuken with a machine gun, after all.  
"Limit Breaks can only be performed when you are low on energy. There is a spell to artificially cause a person to access their Limit Break even when on full strength. However, the after-effects of this spell are rather like the after-effects of an adrenaline rush." She was interrupted by a young girl's hand being waved frantically in the air. "Yes?"  
"Why can we only do Limit Breaks when we're low on energy?" The little girl's question was a reasonable one, and there were several nods from other students who had thought the same question.  
"It has been proved why, and it's extremely complicated. Can we leave out the why for now. I don't understand the proof, it's that complicated. It was proved by a SeeD actually, his name was the Omega. You might have heard of him." From the blank looks that the students gave her, it was clear that they had not. "Well, I'll tell you about him then. This is a lesson in recent history, if anyone asks.  
"Ten years ago a SeeD graduated with a perfect score. He had a name, but when he studied it he found that it had a very bad past, so he stopped using it on his graduation night. Instead, he called himself the Omega. He was the best SeeD there ever was. He was a sword master, but he was a scientist as well. Tales abounded of his deeds when I was a student. He took one of my lessons as a temporary instructor. You could tell that he was an amazing soldier and he taught well. Three years ago, six months after I graduated, he disappeared on a mission. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance were a mystery, and if you look for his files on the computer, they are very classified."  
She didn't tell them that when he left the room that day, the young Quistis had followed him into the training centre. Watching from a clump of trees, she saw the man approach two T-Rexaurs and in five seconds, he had decapitated both of them. His sword moved with such speed, and it was so sharp that the thick bones and muscles of the T-Rexaur's neck stood no chance. She thought briefly about her misguided infatuation with Squall, and decided that whilst with Squall it had been love – although a different love to her original idea – this had been idle curiosity.  
"Nothing much more is known about the Omega. It seems that even his name was lost." The students all seemed rather contented by the story of the almost mythical Omega, and she resumed her teaching, forgetting all about the Omega and his exploits.

Squall was waiting for his girlfriend when she rounded the corner. _This is something Irvine would do_, thought Squall. "What's wrong?" Rinoa turned, startled by the sound of his voice.  
"Do you often do that, waited behind walls for people?" She sounded irritated, and Squall could not believe that this was the same Rinoa who he knew and eventually loved. "You know, it's not very nice sneaking up on people like that."  
"I do it when I need to. What's wrong?" He asked the same question, with both eyebrows raised. "People drink for a variety of reasons. Some drink to remember, others drink to forget…" He stopped when he heard the almost imperceptible sound of her drawing breath. "Or maybe you were just at a party," he finished. She seemed a little relieved when he continued, the commander thought. _Maybe there is something wrong_.  
"I, uh, have to go and do something. See you around, Squall." The dark-haired girl turned and strode down the corridor.

"I'm worried about Rinoa," said Squall, looking across the table at his companions. "I think something is wrong."  
"And so the transformation is complete," laughed Irvine. Squall frowned slightly, but said nothing. _I'll wait, he normally explains even slightly cryptic remarks_ "What I mean" – _Bingo_ – "is that it started off that she was worried about you, and you brushed her off. Now you're oh so worried about her and…" It was almost a scowl, the look that Squall gave the sharpshooter. "Has she given you the brush off?"  
"Whatever."  
"I'll take that as a 'yes', Mr. Sensitive." Another look. So deep was Squall's anger at his friend that he almost didn't realise that he told the truth. "Do you want to talk about it?" The invisible daggers heading straight for Irvine made him back off a little. "I'll take that as a 'no'. At least there's still some of the old Squall left." A thin smile from Irvine, but no reaction from Squall. He was deep in thought.  
_Have I really changed that much_, Squall thought. There was still enough of him to get lost in thought at will, he sarcastically thought, but could he recognise himself? His old nature only seemed to come out when he was angry at something. He had definitely changed, and in his position of responsibility – he once again thanked Cid for it – he could not afford to go back to his previous disposition. The simple fact was that he was needed here. It may be hard for him to accept but people rely on him. _Why do they rely on me still? I didn't ask for any responsibility, I didn't ask for people to like me. I have a job, and I do it. All I ever wanted was to be allowed to get on with my life, but they thrust duties upon me. I am supposed to _thank_ them for this?_  
The commander slowly lowered his head, and buried it in his hands. _I don't rely on people to help me. Why do they need me? But I do need someone._ The SeeD sighed. "I need Rinoa." The rest of the group stopped their conversation and turned towards him.  
"Maybe we shouldn't really be hearing this, Squall." Selphie kicked Irvine, and he yelped, then blew a kiss her way. "Your leg must have slipped Sefie. I'm sorry I was in the way." The brunette smiled sweetly at the cowboy.  
"You know Squall, Rinoa talks to you. Maybe you should try to talk to her again, maybe see if you can't find out what's bothering her. You never know, it might be nothing." _I hope so_, thought Squall, _because I don't know if I could do what Rinoa did for me._

"The people of Esthar will not take this kind of…humiliation lying down!" There was a murmur of assent amongst the assorted generals and admirals at the table. The president nodded, and gestured for the speaker to continue. "What we propose is a build-up of military personnel and materiel along the eastern coast. When the Galbadians strike, we shall be ready. We have already moved to plug the gap left by the removal of Foxtrot Wing, placing the fifth and ninth squadrons on constant alert status. Ground-based mobile Triple-A will be moved from their usual positions around the city to the coastline, and it will be backed up by SAM sites and satellite-based laser-guided missile silos. Fighter squadrons are on maximum alert, with two of our Omicron-class aircraft carriers, the _Invincible_ and the _Aquaterra_ moving into intercept positions. Constant airborne patrols from the carriers will reduce ETA's for incoming aircraft. Meanwhile, from our docks at Kielport the first amphibious assault transports are emerging in case a counter-attack is warranted.  
"Of course, we are hoping for a peaceful solution for this conflict, but if none can be gained then we should be able to launch our own initiative. We have analysed the data from our HK-11† spy satellites and we have picked these five targets for immediate neutralisation." The room lights dimmed, and a holographic image of the country of Galbadia appeared. Five red dots flashed along the western coast. "The first is a munitions dump near Dertion City. An estimated six-month supply of ammunition and spares for the Galbadian army are in this compound.  
"The next is the largest fighter base on the western coast. Poorly defended by manually targeted AAA and by rudimentary SAM sites, our cloaked fighters could take the entire base down with maybe two dozen LGB's." The LGB, or laser-guided bomb, was a very useful tool in the Estharan arsenal. (Author's Note: Their version could work through clouds.)  
"The third site is an unconventional weapons factory and research facility. They specialise in the gas centrifuge separation of military-grade uranium and plutonium manufacture for non-standard weaponry." Although it was a part of his vocabulary, the general could not say the phrase 'nuclear weapons'. They were always 'unconventional' or 'non-standard'. In bad cases he simply referred to them as 'NBC weaponry' – a nice and tidy acronym for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical.  
"The fourth and fifth sites are interconnected. The northern site is a Galbadian listening post with a range that extends a considerable distance into Esthar. The fifth is the regional headquarters of the Galbadian Intelligence Agency." The general motioned and the lights came back up to normal brightness.  
The president blinked a few times to let the irises contract, and then turned to where the general sat. "Is it wholly necessary to kill our fellow human beings? Why can we not resolve these differences peacefully?"  
"The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies."‡ The president sighed once, a soft sound after the booming voice of the general.  
"Very well. I leave this matter in your very capable hands." Some of the generals raised their eyes in surprise, others smiled mischievously. Kiros whispered something in the president's ear. "I think I didn't make myself clear. Every time they attack us, bomb one of their facilities. That will be all." Some of the generals looked downcast as the president and his assistant walked out of the room. "You probably saved me there, Kiros." Ward looked at him. He hadn't heard what Kiros had said. "Sorry Ward, Kiros said 'don't do that, they'll fucking nuke Dulche City'."

Rinoa looked in the mirror. Such a simple action, yet it showed so much. It showed a girl, trying to fill a woman's shoes, and failing desperately. It showed a girl, afraid of losing the man she loved. It showed a girl, afraid of being an outsider. When she was in Deling City, people treated her with respect, but that was purely because she was the daughter of General Caraway. She had changed her name to try and remove herself from this fame, to remove herself from the falseness that is politics.  
_No-one ever listened to_ me. They had always looked at her as an accessory of her father, as a distraction at the parties her father held. She ran from Galbadia to escape from politics, and sought refuge in Timber. Here were people who listened to _her_, not to her name. The reborn Rinoa Heartilly had found people who treated her as an equal. They called her 'princess', but it was a term of endearment, not the singling out she had received in Deling City.  
And then she had met the SeeD party of five. She loved Squall, she knew that she did. But the feeling of being an outsider, of being different scared her. She wanted to run, to be somewhere where she could be one of them. She knew it was silly, that they treated her as one of them. But occasionally, just every now and again, they would say something to her like, 'Rinoa, it might be too dangerous'. And she felt like the outsider again.  
A quiet knock on her door. She knew who it was before the door opened. "Hi Squall." He looked at her and smiled slightly, even a bit, she thought, sympathetically? He stood there looking at her, at how the raven locks shone in the moonlight that streamed through the window, at how the shadows played across her face. He waited for about a minute, until he felt that enough time had passed.  
"Are you ready to talk?" It was a simple question, but to Rinoa it was the realisation that Squall had dropped his mask to try and help her. He risked being caught, like a deer in headlights, with no masculine bravado or cold-heartedness to shelter him.  
"I don't know. Maybe." 

Author: Well, that was different. This is probably the first time I've actually looked at Laguna with anything other than the 'father of Squall' tunnel vision. I didn't expect to write the piece about the past, but it just kind of came out. I always thought of Laguna of being slightly above Selphie on the 'tuned in to life' scale, but after walking a mile in his shoes, I am gaining a better understanding of the man.  
I read through some of my earlier writings and realise that what is above is probably a first. In my previous novels, I was very willing to discuss Heckler and Koch suppressed weaponry or cavitation noise in submarines, but the first was that I looked at a character. Maybe the maturity that comes with age is distilling through to my writing style. Tell me what you think. After all, encouragement costs nothing yet is priceless. As for the next part, I'm having a little trouble with my _real_ work, so unless someone can help me with linear funcitonals and dual spaces it may take a while. Time, tide, and evidently mathematics, wait for no man.

*: Leuchars is a RAF base in Scotland. The ranks and structure of the Estharan Air Force is broadly based on that of the RAF.  
†: This is a slight change to the American KH-11 spy satellite currently in use by the NSA.  
‡: This line is attributable to Lester Bowles Pearson.

[Cairn Rennin][1]

   [1]: mailto:davcrav@cwcom.net



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